Ideas given for I-70 trucks

ST. LOUIS — The head of Missouri’s transportation system favors separating large trucks from cars and other light vehicles on Interstate 70 between St. Louis and Kansas City.

Director Pete Rahn of the Missouri Department of Transportation said heavy trucks make up more than 40 percent of the traffic, four times the rate for which the highway was designed in the 1950s, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported Thursday.

Rahn made his comments during a ceremony near I-70 to mark the 50th anniversary of the interstate highway system. Rahn said the plan to separate truck and car traffic would require two additional I-70 lanes in each direction. He said the project could cost $3.5 billion.

The highway would have four lanes in each direction — two for cars and other light vehicles and two for heavy trucks, separated by a concrete barrier, Rahn said. The requirement could call for complex entrance and exit ramps at many interchanges, he said.

No funding is in place for such a project.

Rahn told the small crowd attending the ceremony that automobile drivers in the mixed crowd of vehicles now using I-70 too often fear they will become part of “a chrome sandwich” if their cars are crushed between two trucks. He said trucks are vital to the nation’s financial health but should be separated from other vehicles on interstates as crowded as I-70.

An overriding issue is whether citizens are willing to foot the bill for rebuilding the interstate system. Rahn said fuel taxes are inadequate to raise all the money needed.

“Unfortunately, whatever we do is going to be expensive,” he added.

Missouri claims to be the birthplace of the interstate system because on Aug. 2, 1956, the Missouri State Highway Commission awarded contracts for 14 miles of pavement on U.S. 66 in Laclede County. The project would become part of Interstate 44. Commissioners also approved work on what is now I-70, where work began Aug. 13, 1956, in St. Charles.