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The Columbia Chamber of Commerce president is praising Missouri Governor Mike Parson and state lawmakers in both parties for providing funding to six-lane I-70 across the state.
The budget signed by the governor provides $2.8 billion to expand and rebuild I-70 from Kansas City to St. Louis. Columbia Chamber president Matt McCormick tells 939 the Eagle that this is a generational project.
“This isn’t something that happens on a regular basis and (it’s) something that we’ve been working on for a very long time. You now I-70 is such a instrumental part of our state. We saw that whenever we were working on the Rocheport bridge, the amount of truck traffic and the amount of freight that comes across there,” McCormick says.
The state Department of Transportation (MoDOT) says four-million trucks cross the I-70 Rocheport bridge each year.
Mr. McCormick has briefed Columbia-area business leaders on the I-70 expansion project. He predicts it will boost safety and commerce.
“And so to be able to widen that and to be able to redo that to where it’s a good, safe efficient place to move goods, service and people, then we are very appreciative of the governor (Mike Parson) signed off on it. We are very appreciative to the (Missouri) Legislature that supported it,” McCormick says.
Mr. McCormick tells business leaders that the Columbia to Kingdom City expansion will be the first phase done by MoDOT. He also says the Boonville to Columbia phase will be the last one done by crews.
Missouri Senate Appropriations Committee chairman Lincoln Hough (R-Springfield) notes part of I-70 through Missouri was built in 1956, when President Dwight Eisenhower was in the White House.
