Missouri has a stretch of asphalt that goes from east to west. Most people only think about it when they’re stuck in a construction delay. Interstate 70 runs from Blue Springs, which is near Kansas City, to Wentzville, which is west of St. Louis. It’s almost 200 miles long and does more heavy lifting than almost any other road in the area. And right now, the state is in the middle of the biggest project to fix up its infrastructure in a generation.
The $2.8 billion Improve I-70 program from the Missouri Department of Transportation is a big deal. Five projects have already been agreed upon. The plan is to add a third lane in each direction along almost the whole corridor. The work should be finished by 2030. Every single day, about 600 people across the state are working to finish projects worth two million dollars. That number is hard to say quickly. It needs some time to think about it.
Not long ago, a federal grant that MoDOT had been quietly competing for sped up the project even more. Missouri got $93 million in INFRA grant money from the U.S. Department of Transportation. This is part of a larger federal effort to make the freight network safer and more efficient. The state had asked for more than $300 million at first, so the award wasn’t all they had hoped for. Anyway, it was enough to make a real difference, especially with truck parking, which is one of the more forgotten parts of this puzzle.
Out of that $93 million, $33.4 million will be used to add more space for trucks along the corridor. Once you know how the math works, the number doesn’t seem very important. About 55% of all goods that are moved across the country do so by truck. By 2043, that number is likely to have risen to almost 59%. And there is only one parking spot set aside for trucks right now for every eleven trucks on the road. As you think about it for longer, the ratio seems less like a hole in the infrastructure and more like a crisis that is taking a long time to get better.
Eric Kopinski, who runs the Improve I-70 program, has spent a lot of time talking to truckers. He keeps hearing things that aren’t about lane widths or the condition of the pavement. Parking is the subject. Truck drivers are only allowed to be on the road for 11 hours before they have to stop. It’s impossible for drivers to find a safe place to pull off when the window is closing. They either have to park illegally on a shoulder or ramp, or they have to keep looking and risk falling asleep at the wheel. That very same situation has led to serious accidents on similar highways in nearby states like Illinois and Indiana. Missouri wants to get ahead of it.
A useful economics point of view is also present, but it is not given sufficient attention. Something has to move from a warehouse to a door every time someone taps “buy now” on their phone. A lot of that traffic moves on roads like I-70. Kopinski made it clear: the demand on this corridor keeps going up as more people order online. He says that the new parking lot will really change how freight moves, and it will be a safety measure as well as a competitive one.
At the end of summer, work will start on making parking better at the same time that the work on expanding lanes continues. Kingdom City just got a new interchange and roundabout. Some drivers are still getting used to the new traffic pattern, but the new layout is meant to make things run more smoothly in the long run. The next big step, a $583 million deal that covers about 43 miles between Kingdom City and Warrenton, could be given out in November. Construction could begin in the spring of 2027. The MoDOT has never given out a single contract that big before.
It’s still not clear how much daily trouble drivers will have for the next few years. There is never no pain in a work zone. When you talk to the people working on this project, you get the sense that they know what they’re building is more than just a wider road. They’re building something that will be critical to how Missouri does business. He says they won’t be coming back when it’s over. That is the kind of confidence that either lasts a long time or becomes a well-known phrase. The trucks keep rolling, the cranes keep moving, and the concrete keeps setting.
