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I-49 Coming to Missouri

Started by US71, August 04, 2010, 06:54:42 PM

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US71

Quote from: I-39 on June 12, 2018, 11:33:45 PM
Quote from: skluth on June 12, 2018, 10:45:41 PM
A short list of projects for MODOT in support of the tax

Bella Vista
US 61 Hannibal bypass
Complete US 71 freeway in South KC (with cap over highway like I-10 in Phoenix)
Piecemeal upgrade of I-70 to six lanes (as it's useless to try it as one project in today's political environment)
Piecemeal upgrade of _I-44 to six lanes (see above)
Upgrade US 63 to four lanes from Iowa to Arkansas
New I-70 Missouri River bridge

Other possibilities
Mississippi River bridge to Kentucky (probably more important than completing the four lanes of US 67 to Arkansas in SE MO)
I-70 bypass of Columbia
Continue four-laning US 50 across state
Freeway conversion of US 61 from Wentzville to Bowling Green

I'd also love it if they got rid of the reversible lanes on I-70 in St Louis and just made it four lanes each direction from the casino to Union Blvd. Not a high priority but the reversible lanes are mostly wasted space as they are currently used.

So they didn't say anything about finishing the four lane US 67 to the state line?

Probably not a priority.
Like Alice I Try To Believe Three Impossible Things Before Breakfast


Henry

If nothing else, finishing the Bella Vista Bypass is a must, and if the gas tax miraculously comes to pass, then it'll all be for the better.
Go Cubs Go! Go Cubs Go! Hey Chicago, what do you say? The Cubs are gonna win today!

mgk920

Quote from: skluth on June 12, 2018, 10:45:41 PM
A short list of projects for MODOT in support of the tax

Bella Vista
US 61 Hannibal bypass
Complete US 71 freeway in South KC (with cap over highway like I-10 in Phoenix)
Piecemeal upgrade of I-70 to six lanes (as it's useless to try it as one project in today's political environment)
Piecemeal upgrade of _I-44 to six lanes (see above)
Upgrade US 63 to four lanes from Iowa to Arkansas
New I-70 Missouri River bridge

Other possibilities
Mississippi River bridge to Kentucky (probably more important than completing the four lanes of US 67 to Arkansas in SE MO)
I-70 bypass of Columbia
Continue four-laning US 50 across state
Freeway conversion of US 61 from Wentzville to Bowling Green

I'd also love it if they got rid of the reversible lanes on I-70 in St Louis and just made it four lanes each direction from the casino to Union Blvd. Not a high priority but the reversible lanes are mostly wasted space as they are currently used.

Is this what I think it is?

:wow:

Mike

skluth

Quote from: US71 on June 13, 2018, 08:08:35 AM
Quote from: I-39 on June 12, 2018, 11:33:45 PM
Quote from: skluth on June 12, 2018, 10:45:41 PM
A short list of projects for MODOT in support of the tax

Bella Vista
US 61 Hannibal bypass
Complete US 71 freeway in South KC (with cap over highway like I-10 in Phoenix)
Piecemeal upgrade of I-70 to six lanes (as it's useless to try it as one project in today's political environment)
Piecemeal upgrade of _I-44 to six lanes (see above)
Upgrade US 63 to four lanes from Iowa to Arkansas
New I-70 Missouri River bridge

Other possibilities
Mississippi River bridge to Kentucky (probably more important than completing the four lanes of US 67 to Arkansas in SE MO)
I-70 bypass of Columbia
Continue four-laning US 50 across state
Freeway conversion of US 61 from Wentzville to Bowling Green

I'd also love it if they got rid of the reversible lanes on I-70 in St Louis and just made it four lanes each direction from the casino to Union Blvd. Not a high priority but the reversible lanes are mostly wasted space as they are currently used.

So they didn't say anything about finishing the four lane US 67 to the state line?

Probably not a priority.
This is my list. Not MODOT.

bugo

Quote from: skluth on June 12, 2018, 10:45:41 PM
Piecemeal upgrade of _I-44 to six lanes (see above)

If I-44 becomes six lanes across Missouri, they should ban trucks from the left lane. There are signs in the St Louis metro that warn truckers to stay out of the left lane. I-44 in MO is a terrible road that is made worse by all the truck traffic. Trucks along that highway have no problem pulling right out in front of you and cutting you off in order to micropass a truck in front of them going 2 MPH slower than they want to go, so it's only fair to block them from the left lane. A completely new freeway on a totally new and straighter alignment is what they really need to do but it would cost billions and won't happen in any of our lifetimes.

As far as the Missouri gas tax, there's no way in hell it will pass. Conservatives are against taxes to the point to where they won't vote for tax increases even if they are beneficial.

US 89

Quote from: bugo on June 21, 2018, 02:53:03 AM
As far as the Missouri gas tax, there's no way in hell it will pass. Conservatives are against taxes to the point to where they won't vote for tax increases even if they are beneficial.

Not always. In Utah, one of the most conservative states, a few years ago most counties passed a sales tax increase (Proposition 1) to fund transportation improvements. Most of the counties that rejected it did so because of corruption in UTA (Utah Transit Authority), not because they opposed the tax.

mvak36

Quote from: bugo on June 21, 2018, 02:53:03 AM

As far as the Missouri gas tax, there's no way in hell it will pass. Conservatives are against taxes to the point to where they won't vote for tax increases even if they are beneficial.

I am not holding my breath on it passing, but I think the chances would be better if they come out with a list of projects that they will do if the gas tax increase passes. Kind of something similar to what TDOT did last year with the IMPROVE Act. The MODOT person I emailed said that they weren't aware of any list.
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mvak36

Governor Parson was in St. Louis and Springfield this week pushing for the gas tax increase.



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TheHighwayMan3561

Some other conservative states have bit the bullet realizing there is no other choice, such as South Dakota. In Minnesota though it's still political football where it can be used by conservatives as a weapon against the Democrats.
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bugo

Staunchly conservative Oklahoma just voted to legalize medicinal marijuana. There is a storm brewing.

US71

Quote from: TheHighwayMan394 on June 29, 2018, 06:02:02 PM
Some other conservative states have bit the bullet realizing there is no other choice, such as South Dakota. In Minnesota though it's still political football where it can be used by conservatives as a weapon against the Democrats.

Arkansas complains about the roads, but no one wants to raise the gas tax. Of course, "Ourdot" is renowned for wasting money on pet projects  while needed repairs are forgotten.
Like Alice I Try To Believe Three Impossible Things Before Breakfast

Bobby5280

Quote from: bugoStaunchly conservative Oklahoma just voted to legalize medicinal marijuana. There is a storm brewing.

Maybe. Or maybe not. SQ788 was one thing that got a lot of people under age 30 to the voting booth. It's not very clear the younger age demographics care enough about other issues to get out and vote. Maybe certain voting blocks will get more fired up from the fallout of what's going to happen with the US Supreme Court.

Nevertheless, roads and gasoline taxes are kind of their own thing. Very few people in any part of the political spectrum want to spend any of their tax dollars on it. And Oklahomans are living in a fantasy world regarding with how "too much" they're already spending on roads. Our fuel taxes and toll rates per mile have been for a long time among the cheapest in the nation. Now we have the prices of steel, aluminum and other building materials rising fast due to new tariffs. That may wreck the budget for road projects under construction or about to begin construction.

bugo

A lot of Republicans voted for SQ788. It passed by a 57-43 margin, which would have been unthinkable 5 years ago. It wouldn't have passed without strong bipartisan support.

Nexus 5X


Scott5114

Quote from: Bobby5280 on July 01, 2018, 03:28:16 PM
Nevertheless, roads and gasoline taxes are kind of their own thing. Very few people in any part of the political spectrum want to spend any of their tax dollars on it. And Oklahomans are living in a fantasy world regarding with how "too much" they're already spending on roads. Our fuel taxes and toll rates per mile have been for a long time among the cheapest in the nation. Now we have the prices of steel, aluminum and other building materials rising fast due to new tariffs. That may wreck the budget for road projects under construction or about to begin construction.

I do wonder how much of our road situation is due to funding and how much is due to ODOT incompetence. More funding won't fix stretched-out Series B, so one wonders what else could be easily fixed by just hiring different people.
uncontrollable freak sardine salad chef

Bobby5280

There is definitely some level of incompetence going on with the traffic signs. It's difficult for me to not feel annoyed every time I see big green signs with lowercase letters reduced to 75% of their normal height. Giant capital letter, stupid tiny lowercase letters. Lawton has a bunch of street name post signs all over town with that same kind of garbage. And in that case I think they did it on purpose so they could fit mixed-case lettering on narrow green blades originally meant only for uppercase-only lettering. No room for descenders.

I get the feeling ODOT and others in this state are trying to give California a run for its money on having the ugliest traffic signs. The honest truth is they just don't care. Maybe they have some intern or temp doing the graphic design grunt work. They person doesn't know what he is doing, but the agency is saving money on payroll.

Scott5114

Quote from: Bobby5280 on July 06, 2018, 09:39:12 AM
There is definitely some level of incompetence going on with the traffic signs. It's difficult for me to not feel annoyed every time I see big green signs with lowercase letters reduced to 75% of their normal height. Giant capital letter, stupid tiny lowercase letters. Lawton has a bunch of street name post signs all over town with that same kind of garbage. And in that case I think they did it on purpose so they could fit mixed-case lettering on narrow green blades originally meant only for uppercase-only lettering. No room for descenders.

I guarantee you it's because of that line in the MUTCD that says that lowercase letters are supposed to be 75% the height of the uppercase. That's meant to specify the intended x-height of the FHWA Series fonts, but people see that and think they're supposed to shrink the already-correctly-sized letters by 25%. It's just people being stupid and not understanding the manual.

The next time the MUTCD is open for public comment I think we need to see if we can get NCUTCD to strike it.
uncontrollable freak sardine salad chef

J N Winkler

I tend to agree the uppercase/lowercase size mismatch is a result of the lowercase loop height specification being misunderstood, but I think that language has been in the MUTCD for decades and the problem was never this bad during the button copy era.
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DJStephens

Quote from: bugo on June 30, 2018, 03:26:56 AM
Staunchly conservative Oklahoma just voted to legalize medicinal marijuana. There is a storm brewing.

Heck if they can tax weed, and transfer the funds to transportation budgets, am all for it. 

DJStephens

Quote from: mvak36 on June 21, 2018, 01:27:56 PM
Quote from: bugo on June 21, 2018, 02:53:03 AM

As far as the Missouri gas tax, there's no way in hell it will pass. Conservatives are against taxes to the point to where they won't vote for tax increases even if they are beneficial.

I am not holding my breath on it passing, but I think the chances would be better if they come out with a list of projects that they will do if the gas tax increase passes. Kind of something similar to what TDOT did last year with the IMPROVE Act. The MODOT person I emailed said that they weren't aware of any list.

Hope they do get it to pass.  They blundered in a big way by not passing the previous fuel tax initiative (early 00's).  They (MoDOt) was building some ambitious stuff in the nineties, likely due to lower fuel prices at that time.   Do remember reading about it in "the Trucker" an over the road trucker newspaper.   The counties around Hannibal were the only part of the state who supported the initiative, so possibly that is why they have been blessed with so much construction and amenities.  Meaning I-72 designation reaching them, and now US 61 upgrading. 

Bobby5280

#819
Quote from: J N WinklerI tend to agree the uppercase/lowercase size mismatch is a result of the lowercase loop height specification being misunderstood, but I think that language has been in the MUTCD for decades and the problem was never this bad during the button copy era.

Back in the button-copy era (when much/all of the traffic sign design was being done using "analog" methods) it wasn't possible for a computer workstation jockey to press a few keystrokes and seriously screw up the lettering in a layout -such as scaling lowercase letters down to only 75% of their normal size. A bunch of those button copy letters were made out of fabricated aluminum. I suspect the pieces were stamped/die cut in mass quantities. Today traffic sign lettering is usually cut out of reflective vinyl using computer controlled vinyl cutters/plotters. It's a faster/cheaper process. It can be customized relatively easily within whatever digital software is being used to compose the sign layout. The fast & easy thing also makes it fast & easy to make mistakes too.

I was under the impression the MUTCD only added the vague language about sign fonts in recent years due to the experimentation with the Clearview Highway type family. Its lowercase letters clearly comply with the rule of x-height being at least 75% the capital letter M-height. FHWA Series Gothic lowercase letters barely comply with the rule.

The MUTCD simply should have stated specifically which typefaces were permitted for use on traffic signs and nothing else about the traits of that family. Just say traffic signs are only allowed to use fonts in the FHWA Series Gothic family. Any other type family use is prohibited. Then that would leave room to spell out other rules that sadly need to be hammered into the heads of some no-talent hacks out there. I personally have an intense hatred for signs that have lettering squeezed or stretched out of normal proportions. It's rare to see such an abomination on traffic signs. I most often see it on some narrow street name signs where Series C or B just wasn't skinny enough. Distorted type is all over the place with cheap commercial signs -especially with default fonts like Arial Bold or Arial Black. That's visual "turd on a stick" material right there. It doesn't help that the syndrome shows up on a lot of cluttered looking signs, temporary signs or other stuff that looks like trash. It's the kind of thing that helps inspire city governments to draft sweeping anti-sign legislation.

Clearview Highway may have ultimately been a failure, but it sheds a light on how primitive the FHWA Series Gothic family really is and how it needs an overhaul. Some of the glyphs need improvement -kind of like the way the original 1950's cut of Helvetica was cleaned up in the 1980's with Helvetica Neue. The character set needs to be expanded. I dislike the MUTCD rule outlawing diacritical marks. I can't help but think the rule dates back to the button copy era where things like little accents and umlauts would have been harder to install accurately. Such marks are no sweat when run out of a vinyl cutter. Entire lines of copy are release taped and applied to the sign face in one piece. Nevertheless the marks are necessary for Latin and European language support. Then there's the instance of using small capitals on cardinal directions, which is currently an eye-sore kludge on traffic signs. Many modern OpenType fonts contain native small capital character sets.

Anyway, aside from fixing that stupid lowercase letter size rule, those government agencies still have quite a bit of work to do.

Quote from: DJStephensHeck if they can tax weed, and transfer the funds to transportation budgets, am all for it.

I'm not going to hold my breath waiting for the OK legislature to do something logical. The state just raised its gasoline tax for the first time in 25 years (per gallon, a 3¢ increase on gasoline and 6¢ on diesel), but the increase is being re-directed into education to help fund pay raises for teachers. Personally I have no problem giving teachers in OK a pay hike; our teachers are among the worst paid in the nation. We're losing well qualified teachers to much higher paying jobs in neighboring states. Meanwhile we have thousands of "emergency certified" teachers trying to fill vacant positions. It's a serious problem. However, our roads need help too. And there are other ways to fund the pay hikes and make things better for teachers. We have 520 public school districts for a state of just under 4 million people. California has a similar number of school districts but literally 10 times the population. There is a lot of bureaucracy that could be eliminated without negatively affecting teachers and students. I think the insane number of school districts is all about property tax gerrymandering. There is a great deal of inequity taking place from one school district to the next.

I was under the impression 75% of tax revenue collected from SQ 788 would go into the general revenue fund to be spent on common education. 25% would go into drug and alcohol rehab programs.

bugo

SQ 788 went into effect today. Let's hope the state government doesn't water it down too much.

Gordon

http://www.joplinglobe.com/news/local_news/missouri-arkansas-collaborate-on-federal-grant-in-attempt-to-complete/article_53b093aa-932d-58aa-a1a8-77f684868ae3.html                                 This news article shows MDOT they are trying to help as much as they can to get the Build Grant along with Northwest Arkansas Regional planning commission. Hopefully between now and Dec. 18th there will be more Politicking to secure this Grant.

edwaleni

The 10 cent road tax referendum in Missouri is currently in court arguing that it is unconstitutional.

It may not make the ballot come November.

With no grant funding so far, that would doom I-49 for a few more years.

Scott5114

How does anyone have standing to challenge it as unconstitutional if it hasn't been enacted yet? Usually to have standing you have to demonstrate that the law harms you in some way.
uncontrollable freak sardine salad chef

SD Mapman

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