Warren County has been at the center of work this year on the Missouri Department of Transportation’s Improve I-70 program.
That work is continuing on schedule, with a major contract for the next project segment, from Warrenton to Kingdom City, expected to be awarded this fall, Improve I-70 Program Director Eric Kopinski told the Record in a recent interview.
From now until Thanksgiving, Kopinski said, MoDOT and its contractors will be completing more than $2 million worth of work every single day of the week, including weekends, statewide on I-70.
“In the Warrenton to Wentzville project alone, that 19-mile project is over a million dollars a day from now until Thanksgiving,” he said.
“And even December, if we have good weather, the contractors are going to keep the crews working, so there’s a lot of progress and a lot of work being completed.”
The overall Improve I-70 program, funded with $2.8 billion in fiscal year 2024, will add a third lane in each direction and make other improvements to nearly 200 miles of the interstate between Blue Springs and Wentzville. Work on the overall program is expected to be complete by the end of 2030, although it has been broken up into eight smaller segments.
Just in the Warrenton to Wentzville project, MoDOT has around 150 “craft workers” working “every night, mostly, but in the day as well,” Kopinski said. “So those are the women and men that are pouring concrete and building the bridges, that’s not me or the folks paying the invoices or delivering material to the site, those are the folks that are just literally building the project.”
When the Improve I-70 program began, “we said how we get there may change a little bit with the different phases or as we reach out to industry and find when is best to award projects based on when contractors have availability and crews, but overall, our schedule and our budget has not changed since we first started,” Kopinski said.
One example of a place where plans for Improve I-70 have changed from what MoDOT initially envisioned is in the High Hill area in Montgomery County, he said.
“We originally had that as a standalone project, and as we talked with industry partners, we decided that it was in the best interest of getting better value to kind of create it in a bigger project, so in November we’re going to award this $580 million project from Kingdom City to Warrenton,” he added.
“So it will be on the bookend of where we are right now with Warrenton to Wentzville, but that project has kind of changed a little bit where it’s become a little big bigger, but it’s still going to be done all at the time we committed to for the area.”
Five of the eight project segments for Improve I-70 have already been designed and information on MoDOT’s plans is publicly available, Kopinski said, while three segments are still under design.
“And we know for each of those three projects we will be adding a third lane each direction, and we’re going to try to rebuild as much pavement as possible,” he said. “But those details, we’re going to know as we go to award those projects, and so for the Kingdom City to Warrenton project, we will know all those design details in November.”
MoDOT will be able to provide more information in November about “the look and feel and who’s going to build that and complete that project,” Kopinski said, adding that there will be public meetings in early 2027.
“So as we start work, before any work starts, we’re going to have a couple public meetings and invite the public out, so they can come see better information on how the project’s going to be staged, where we’re going to start, what are going to be some of the most challenging parts of construction for traffic flow and other areas of that,” he said.
In the High Hill area, “the big hurdle there from the engineering side,” Kopinski said, is “creating a third lane with the railroad bridge there and trying to minimize the right-of-way impacts,” which MoDOT is hard at work planning for right now.
Although it is not yet even officially fall, MoDOT is also already planning for winter weather as it relates to the work on I-70, Kopinski said.
“It’s crazy to believe that we’re talking about that, but our department has already started to plan for that and start to look into situations for what we’re going to be in,” he said.
“One of the things we do ahead of time is we challenge industry to stage their projects, so part of the award for who gets these contracts is, how is traffic going to be least disrupted? How can they as quickly as possible build these projects? And one of the aspects of that is, how are they going to handle winter weather,” he said, including things like “how our plows and the traveling public can most efficiently get through the work area.”
As was the case last year, there will be extensive inter-agency coordination in planning for winter weather even before the first snow falls, Kopinski said.
“And then when snow did hit, we had a lot of meetings after the fact to talk through what worked, what did not work. So we plan to do the same thing again this year,” he added.
MoDOT will host a meeting at Missouri State Emergency Management Agency headquarters in Jefferson City to talk about winter weather impacts on the statewide I-70 corridor, Kopinski said. Last year there was also a meeting held in Warren County for local first responders, he added, and that will likely also be the case again this year.
As work begins on the Kingdom City to Warrenton segment of Improve I-70, “I think anyone in Warrenton won’t see too much of a difference for where we stage or start and stop. We’re coming pretty quickly for the piece to the west of where construction’s pretty aggressive right now in Warrenton, so it won’t be too much longer before we’re there,” Kopinski said.
At a Truesdale Board of Aldermen meeting in August, Alderman Mike Thomas said it seemed like MoDOT had “completely stopped mowing” since the start of the Improve I-70 project — a suspicion that may have some grounds.
“If we have any areas that folks feel like we could do a better job, we would encourage them to reach out to us and let us know. We get several calls or emails a day about signs being down, or litter, or mowing, so we will continue to try to do our best effort while we rebuild this I-70 corridor,” Kopinski said.
“The parts that are under construction, there is a sense of patience that we ask for driving through the work zones. But also the look and feel of some of those, it’s not always the most aesthetically pleasing, and some of that is, allowing the grass to grow for our active projects really helps with our erosion control and making sure that we’re environmentally in compliance, so there is some reasons behind the madness,” he added.
“But certainly, we welcome any, you know, public questions or recommendations, and we can better take a look at that and see what we can do to get there.”
MoDOT has continued to coordinate with the Missouri State Highway Patrol, as well as local law enforcement, fire, and emergency medical services agencies, Kopinski said.
“We are asking quite a lot more of the first responders. When we close roads or ramps or have impacts, it is more difficult to get to crashes when they do happen, but we are leaning on them to try to help enforce our speed limits that are posted out there, and they are stepping up their efforts to do additional enforcement,” he said.
Safety of its workers is MoDOT’s top priority, Kopinski said, adding that the general public can do their part to ensure worker safety by slowing down in work zones.
“A lot of the folks that are building this project are local to the area, and they just want to go home at the end of the day, and there’s nothing worse than when they’re working a long day in the rain, cold, or 100-degree weather, and cars are just flying by there,” Kopinski said.
For more information on the Improve I-70 program, visit www.modot.org/improvei70.
