According to the Missouri Department of Transportation (MODOT), construction will begin this spring to widen Interstate 70 across Missouri.
The project is expected to last seven years.
Last May, $2.8 billion was allocated for the project.
Work on the expansion has been ongoing since the money was approved. Eric Kopinski, director of MODOT’s Improve I-70 program, said the project will be completed in several phases.
“There are some environmental clearances that we have to obtain for our internal processes, and then we're also working closely with our federal highway partners, so we're making sure that all those are completed and allow us to begin construction,” Kopinski said.
The work is broken up into six segments.
Kopinski said the department is going through contract negotiations for the first portion of construction, which is a roughly 20-mile stretch between Kingdom City and Columbia.
That contract is anticipated to be awarded in February, with construction to start in late April or May.
“The driver for having the Columbia-to-Kingdom City project go first was there's been considerable work done to the 63/70 interchange over the last two or so years,” Kopinski said. “So that project had a lot of work done and was much more closely ready to be shovel ready and start construction.”
---------------------------------------------------
Source: STLPR.org
