MoDOT: Most Springfield roads in good condition

Major Springfield roads include Interstate 44 and highways 60, 65 and 13.

Statewide, Missouri showed drastic improvement, with 78 percent of its major roads in good condition. That’s up from 46 percent three years ago, according to a MoDOT news release.

MoDOT officials say the department’s Smooth Roads Initiative in 2005 and 2006 improved 2,200 miles of Missouri highways, accounting for much of the reported progress. That initiative was funded by Amendment 3, which voters passed in November 2004.

The Better Roads, Brighter Future Program took up where Smooth Roads left off, and the rest of Missouri’s major highways are getting smoother surfaces, wider stripes, brighter signs and paved shoulders under that initiative. When Better Roads ends in 2011, 85 percent of the state’s major roads will be in good condition, MoDOT Director Pete Rahn predicts.

In the near future, however, transportation improvement will hit a roadblock.

“In 2010, funding for transportation will fall off a cliff,” Rahn said in the release. “We’ll return to funding levels similar to those before Amendment 3. This level of investment was inadequate then and will be dramatically more inadequate in 2010.”

Voters will decide whether to increase transportation funding.