On July 10, the Missouri Highways and Transportation Commission approved the fiscal years 2025-29 Statewide Transportation Improvement Program. The program outlines planned improvements, repairs and additions to the state’s network of more than 30,000 miles of roads. 

Included in the program's 609 pages are a number of construction, scoping and design and design-build projects that are scheduled to take place in part or entirely here in Warren County. 

While some of the projects are smaller or will not bear fruit for several years there are several that will have more immediate impacts on Warren County residents, including new information related to the Warrenton to Wentzville section of the Improve I-70 project. 

Improve I-70

Shortly after the release of the STIP, it was announced by MoDOT that they had narrowed the field of prospective contractors for the Warrenton to Wentzville section of the project to three, the Ames Millstone Joint Venture, the Improve I-70 Alliance Joint Venture and the Walsh Team. 

The three teams are each made up of several firms that if chosen, would be responsible for the design-build project. 

Under the design-build model, the teams will submit proposals for how they will both design and build the project with a pre-set price tag from MoDOT along with a set of guidelines and goals that the contractors must meet. 

According to MoDOT Area Engineer Jeff Niemeyer, that price tag currently sits at $565 million along with an additional $40 million that was earmarked in the state budget for “an interchange east of Wright City.”. 

“It’s up to whatever the design build team does, we’ve kind of showed some alternatives that they could build, but until they come forth with a proposal we select, we don’t quite know what we’re getting,” Niemeyer said. “Right now, we’re asking for everything, and then they’ll come back and basically tell us what they can get for the budget.”

He also said that budget was the largest for a project in MoDOT’s history. 

The guidelines for the project that will be located in Warren County include a third lane of travel between Warrenton and Wentzville both eastbound and westbound, as well as “interchange improvements in Wright City,” according to a press release. 

The release did not elaborate on what these improvements would entail. 

For now residents will have to wait to see what the team awarded the project proposes. Currently those teams are preparing their proposals which will be reviewed by MoDOT who will then award a bid some time in the fall of 2024. 

From there Niemeyer said construction could begin as soon as spring of 2025 although that is dependent on a number of other outside factors like weather. 

Other projects

There are three other projects of note that will impact Warren County in the near future. 

Potentially the most important of the three will be repairs to a slide on Highway U in southern Warren County. The road was initially closed on May 9 when damage to the roadway was noted and then that closure was extended indefinitely on May 16 when that damage turned into a large slide that took much of the roadway with it. 

Originally, improvements to Highway U were included in the scoping and design section of the STIP, which looks at future improvements to be made in the following STIP, although following the slide, Niemeyer said they were able to include the highway in the construction section to fast-track the repairs. 

“In our draft STIP, we had a scoping project for the route before the slide to kind of look on the engineering side,” Niemeyer said. “But after the slide we had to close the road there for public safety and just because you couldn’t really go through there, so we were able to bring construction funds in too.”

The project is budgeted to cost just shy of $3.3 million and Niemeyer said they hoped to begin construction in early 2025. 

“It’s kind of weather depending, … It’s kind of tough to work on frozen ground, so I really think it’ll be as soon as things warm up next spring,” Niemeyer said. 

District 42 State Representative Jeff Myers admitted that the legislature does not have direct oversight on all decisions made at MoDOT, he was pleased that the project had been moved up on the schedule and said it was vital that the slide was repaired as soon as possible. 

“If you’re in that section, if you need an ambulance, it’s gonna take a while to get there, and so that was my impetus for trying to get that expedited as quickly as possible,” Myers said. 

Other projects with funding appropriated in Warren County included pavement improvements to Highway 47 between Route M/MM and the Missouri River Bridge as well as the replacement of the Route A/B bridge over I-70 near Pendleton in conjunction with the Improve I-70 project. 

The full STIP along with subdivided sections can be accessed on MoDOT’s website at https://www.modot.org/statewide-transportation-improvement-program-stip.