Melissa Houston
KINGDOM CITY, Mo. (KMIZ)
Demolition on a pair of now-unused bridges at the Highway 54 exit on Interstate 70 will begin Friday night and last through the weekend.
The Highway 54 roundabout will be closed from 7 p.m. Friday to 5 a.m. Monday for demolition of the unused bridges that sit in the middle of the roundabout.
Missouri Department of Transportation Improve I-70 statewide director Eric Kopinski said the work will affect Interstate 70 traffic in both directions.
“We’ve tried to work around the major events for the lake season and Mizzou football and some of the other big trip generators,” Kopinski said. “But there’s never a good weekend to do that.”
The eastbound and westbound lanes of I-70 will be closed, and drivers will have to exit onto the access roads during the closure to go around the demolition.
“We expect the I-70, especially Saturday and Sunday during the day, the traffic delays and in extra travel time could be up to an hour,” Kopinski said.
Drivers who use the Highway 54 roundabout will have to find alternate ways to their destination. Kopinski said there are detours available for drivers, but the construction will still cause potential “adverse travel” for local traffic.
“This will be one of our more major impacts for the fall and for the rest of the year,” Kopinski said. “There are detours in place to get around, but it will take additional travel time throughout the weekend.”
The MoDOT website has available detour routes:
Eastbound 54 traffic will be detoured to eastbound I-70 to Callaway County Routes A/Z (Exit 155) to westbound I-70.
Westbound 54 traffic will be detoured to westbound I-70 to Callaway County Route M (Exit 144) to eastbound I-70.
All ramps at Route M/Hatton will be open for the duration of the demolition.
Kompinski said roughly 30 workers will be on site day and night. Because of the old bridges’ location, he said crews will have to work carefully and quickly to avoid damaging the new bridges.
“There’s a significant amount of work to do, and we do have two bridges that we’re demolishing really close to the existing bridge,” Kopinski said. “It’s a very careful, methodical process in order to remove these bridges that were originally built in the 1960s.”
When the initial I-70 project was started, Kopinski said MoDOT was unsure if the Highway 54 roundabout would get new bridges. The old bridges are at the end of their useful life, and the new bridges will serve Kingdom City for the next 70 years.
“We need to remove them in order to clean up the interchange and just complete the work in this area. But again, there’s never a perfect time to do this work,” Kopinski said.
Tom Crawford, the president and CEO of the Missouri Truckers Association, said that construction comes as a barrier to truckers, but the end result makes the hassle worth it
“Construction is kind of one of those necessary evils, you know, you’re looking forward to the the benefits of the construction,” Crawford said. “The the challenges is to get there, the temporary closures, the reroutes, all of those are definitely challenges for truckers who are trying to get what you’re ordering to your to your destination.”
The main concern with construction for truckers is the difficulty of stopping when having to shift from high speeds on interstates to immediate slowdowns on back roads.
“Trucks can’t stop on a dime, they can’t stop like cars at four wheelers and pickup trucks can,” Crawford said. “It’s very challenging in the environment we see, where folks are driving distracted that can really cause concerns.”
Crawford said that the business tries to hire professionals behind the wheel who are promoting safety, but he hopes that the rest of the motoring public is paying attention as well.
Each construction route is different, and for truckers and other motorists, being alert is an important step in keeping themselves and others safe.
“You’re being asked to drive a lower level, you know, a lower speed limit because the routes are aren’t the same, they aren’t the same with they’ve always been, they’re going to be tighter, they’re going to be narrower, they’re going to be curvier and perhaps bumpier,” Crawford said. “You have to be prepared for anything in this time of construction.”
Kopinski recommends that drivers stay alert through the construction and plan extra travel time.
“The big push for here in Kingdom City is the impacts during the day will be unexpected that we normally don’t see,” Kopinski said. “Our message to viewers is: please allow for that additional travel time, and please slow down in the area as crews try to safely do their job and get the work completed simply.”
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