Thursday, Jul. 02, 2009

Public hearings set for new $640 million Mississippi River bridge

The transportation agencies for Illinois and Missouri are set to hold a pair of public hearings next week in both states on plans for the new $640 million Mississippi River bridge scheduled to be completed by 2015.

Senior staff from both departments will inform the public about plans to set up a dual Disadvantaged Business Enterprise program for the project to boost the participation of minority- and women-owned businesses. A waiver application is being sought from the U.S. Department of Transportation to establish separate minority and woman-owned business enterprise goals.

IDOT and MoDOT are teaming up to build the four-lane crossing, a step that was ratified when the governors of both states signed an agreement in late February 2008.

Once it is completed, the new span will provide the St. Louis metro area with its fifth bridge. The bridge would divert Interstate 70 traffic off congested Interstate 64, drawing it northward to a section north of Brooklyn and funneling it toward interchanges north of the Edward D. Jones Dome, in downtown St. Louis.

The new bridge is being built to take much of the traffic load off the Poplar Street crossing by diverting I-70 traffic to the new crossing about three miles up river.

The four-lane span, whose $640 million price tag includes a new interchange for Interstates 64 and 255 several miles west, will be located between the Martin Luther King and McKinley bridges.

Missouri has agreed to put up $88 million for the project, while Illinois' share is $313 million -- a disparity blamed on the fact that Illinois must move and rebuild many more miles of highway compared to Missouri.

The federal government has agreed to put up the remaining $239 million. Measuring 96 feet wide and 1,500 feet in length, the bridge is scheduled to open in 2015, with the first work beginning in 2010.

The Missouri Highway and Transportation Commission already has awarded the first project contract -- a $4.4 million project to demolish and replace two overpasses that cross I-70 in St. Louis.