Master road plan lays transportation foundation

Big dreams come with big price tags.

County officials have mapped out the next 25 years of road improvement plans with some help from the Ozarks Transportation Organization.

The OTO’s Major Thoroughfare Plan lays out exactly what officials think the area’s roads will look like and looks at what improvements will be needed to meet traffic demands.

Most notably, the plan calls for impovements to Highway 14, between U.S. Highway 60 and U.S. Route 160, and the widening of U.S. 160, known in Springfield as Campbell Avenue.

The difficult task is determining how much money is needed for the projects.

For example, the widening of Highway 14 – the only Christian County project currently listed as being eligible for funds from the Missouri Department of Transportation – is expected to cost between $25 million and $30 million.

The Highway 14 corridor has been noted as an area of rapid development; the U.S. Senate has earmarked $6 million for improvements in that area, though MoDOT officials say there is no indication when the additional money will be available.

And that’s just one project; the plan also calls for a Highway CC extension from Main Street to Nicholas Road in Nixa and West Bypass and Kansas Expressway extensions south into Nixa.

The corridor study

Deciding on which improvements to make first will be influenced by the OTO’s ongoing North-South Corridor Study, which is looking at the need to expand four key potential connections between Greene and Christian counties: West Bypass, Kansas Expressway, and Campbell and National avenues.

OTO Executive Director Dan Rudge said the corridor study is about two-thirds complete; the board of directors is expected to vote on the proposal in December.

Those routes would have trickle-down effects on other road improvements in the region.

“If you think about the north-south corridors, and adding access to James River Freeway, now you’re looking at overpass improvements,” said Brian Bingle, Nixa city administrator. “You have to change them out so they can handle the additional volume.”

Those north-south improvements, however costly and difficult they may be, are crucial for an area that continues to grow.

Christian County’s population has grown an estimated 24 percent in the last five years according to the U.S. Census Bureau, and Greene County has grown by nearly 5 percent.

Highway 65 has seen traffic increase by 20 percent in the last five years traveling in both directions in both counties, according to MoDOT traffic counts; Highway 160 has seen similar growth during that period.

Many communities, one plan

Though individual communities recognize the advantages of working together and having an overall plan, they also still have their own ideas about which projects are the most urgent.

“The difficulty comes in competing with needs of a higher priority,” Nixa’s Bingle said. “When you look at (the interchange of) I-44 and 65, or 65 and 60, those needs certainly outweigh widening of 14 or the CC extension.”

That’s where OTO comes in.

The organization collects the requests of all jurisdictions in its area – which covers Greene County and northern Christian County – and prioritizes them. That list of priorities is what state and federal governments use to determine how much funding each project receives.

“MoDOT does not work in a vacuum from the OTO, and the OTO doesn’t work in a vacuum from MoDOT,” Rudge said. “We all come together and discuss the priorities, and it’s by unanimous consent that we determine which projects should be done when.”

OTO’s highest overall priorities remain in Greene County for the moment; among the projects at the top of the list are the Interstate-44 interchange with U.S. 65 and the confluence of Republic Road, Glenstone Avenue and James River Freeway.

Despite the best planning efforts of all the cities, counties and organizations involved, funding remains the key issue. MoDOT, for example, lists the timeframe for the Highway 14 widening as “future.”

“No funding is available to acquire property or to build these improvements,” the MoDOT Web site says about the project. “When money becomes available, MoDOT will be able to use the concept being developed now to move ahead with a project.”

As Nixa’s Bingle says, “It all comes down to money. If the money isn’t there, the projects can’t be built.”