Ingrams August 2023

The highway money, that is. Missouri is doing just that with its ambitious plan to widen I-70 to at least six lanes across the state’s breadth. Show Me the Money

by Dennis Boone

L ike a steely-eyed riverboat gam bler, Gov. Mike Parson pushed $859 million in chips to the center of the table in early 2023. He was betting that the Missouri Gen eral Assembly would go along with his call to make Interstate 70 a six lane highway between Blue Springs and the St. Louis suburbs. The legislative reply: “We’ll see your $859 million . . . and raise you $2 billion.” With that, the 2023 session in Jefferson City produced the largest single public works project in Show Me State history. Lawmakers signed off on a $2.8 billion package that would add a third lane in each direc tion between the exurbs of St. Louis and Kansas City. For now, the only stretch of that road that features additional lanes runs for just a few miles through Columbia. The scope of the project, in a word, is unprecedented, just as it was nearly 70 years ago, at the dawn of the interstate highway age. Right From the Start Congress approved the first fund ing for a nascent interstate system in 1956, and almost immediately, Mis souri was part of the conversation: The first construction contracts for this new interstate system were awarded in August of that year in Missouri, starting with a portion of I-70 in St. Charles County. That was just weeks after Presi dent Dwight Eisenhower called for the construction of a 41,000-mile

Dovetailing with Miller’s call to action a few years later, the national transportation research non-profit TRIP placed Missouri in the Top 10 nationwide for the number of inter state bridges that were either in poor condition or structurally deficient: One in 20 statewide. Many of the first interstate bridges built had a life expectancy of 50 years; the average age for those in Missouri’s system is bucking up against that threshold at 48 years. And more than half, 56 percent, of the state’s interstate bridges, have exceeded that original life expectancy. Beyond safety and convenience, I-70 is arguably the backbone of interstate commerce in Missouri. The importance of interstate lane miles to the state’s economy is enormous: Those freeways make up just 2 percent of all roadway lane miles in Missouri, but carry 27 percent of vehicle travel statewide, TRIP estimates. That comes to 21.5 million vehicle miles of travel annually. Moreover, the large trucks that carry the majority of freight shipped in the U.S. accounted for 17 percent of all vehicle miles of travel on the state’s highway system before the 2020 pandemic struck. That ranked Missouri No. 9 nationally in that metric. All told, more than $480 bil lion in goods are shipped every year to and from sites in Missouri, and the vast majority of that is done by truck—67 percent.

system of Interstate highways, paid for with fuel taxes on motorists and states picking up 10 percent of the cost. The federal government would pay 90 percent of the initial con struction costs. Missouri wasted no time getting the road graders fired up. On Aug. 13 of that year, the first interstate construction project in the nation began on a part of U.S. 40 that would be redesignated Interstate 70 in St. Charles County. The $1.87 million project—about $20.9 million in 2023 dollars—included 3.1 miles of bridging, grading, and concrete paving. Flash forward nearly 70 years later, and the money authorized by the state in 2023 isn’t coming a moment too soon. Steve Miller, the former chairman of the Missouri Highways and Transportation Commission, rang the alarm bell on I-70’s condi tion back in 2015. The interstate, he wrote, “has become a huge liability. Its origi nal pavement is shot, held together by years and years of overlays. The original pavement and base—some of which dates back to sections of old U.S. Route 40 that was built in the 1920s—have been pounded to bits by years of mounting traffic, heavier loads, and increased tire pressures. Its bridges are nearing the end of their useful lives. It carries far more traffic than it was designed to. Con gestion is mounting. The increas ing mix of long-haul trucks with cars makes people nervous and con cerned for their safety.”

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