FACING A FOUR-LANE FUTURE: IMPROVEMENTS TO U.S. 60 PROGRESS, BUT MUCH REMAINS TO BE DONE

Old U.S. 60 has disappeared in some parts of Southeast Missouri, replaced by a wider, divided four-lane highway that has erased the sharp twists and turns of a two-lane road that too often proved deadly for motorists.

Poplar Bluff accountant Dennis Hanes wishes the road work had come sooner. His friend Larry Nunley died on a stretch of U.S. 60 west of Fisk in August 1997, shortly before a section of new four-lane highway opened in the Poplar Bluff area.

Nunley was 45 when he died, killed in a head-on collision in which his pickup was struck by an oncoming car that crossed the center line. The 19-year-old driver of the car died too.

Hanes believes the accident wouldn't have happened if U.S. 60 had been a divided four-lane highway as it is now.

"Think about putting your son or daughter on a road in a vehicle going toward another vehicle at 60 miles an hour and passing three feet apart. Wouldn't you rather have them on a divided highway?" said Hanes.

He is pleased with the new, wider highway. But there are still vast sections of the highway, which snakes through southern Missouri, that remain two winding lanes of pavement sandwiched among forested hills and valleys.

U.S. 60 is a four-lane highway from Sikeston to Poplar Bluff on the eastern side of Missouri and from Springfield to Willow Springs on the western end. Between them, there is a stretch of about 100 miles still to be widened.

About 40 miles is under construction or on the drawing board for improvements in the next several years.

No timetable

But there is no timetable or funding in place for the remaining 60 miles that extend west from Van Buren through small towns such as Winona, Birch Tree and Mountain View, map dots on a route that economic developers like Bill Green hope will one day be served by a four-lane highway.

Green, economic development director for the city of Sikeston, co-chairs the Highway 60 Committee, a group of civic leaders from big and small towns along the route who want to see the highway widened to four lanes all the way across southern Missouri.

Further improvements are being planned for U.S. 60 in western Kentucky. Green hopes that U.S. 60 could one day funnel traffic between Interstate 24 at Paducah, Ky., and Interstate 44 at Springfield, Mo.

"I think that is the grand plan if you want to call it that," said Green. For that to happen, there would have to be a new bridge built across the Mississippi River near Cairo, Ill.

But for now, Green and others are focused on widening the route in Missouri, a move they say will boost economic development and improve traffic safety.

Some truckers steer clear of the two-lane highway during the winter because the route west of Poplar Bluff is so dangerous, Green said.

A 5.9-mile stretch of U.S. 60 in eastern Carter County is under construction, and the Missouri Department of Transportation plans to widen a 10-mile stretch of the highway west of Poplar Bluff within the next four years.

By the end of 2005, U.S. 60 could be four lanes all the way to Van Buren.

Green said the two-lane highway is dangerous as it twists and turns its way through Carter County. "There are a lot of curves. There are a lot of hills. Particularly at night, it is difficult to drive," he said.

The state expects to spend about $90 million improving the highway from Poplar Bluff to Van Buren and about $50 million to provide four lanes near Willow Springs.

Widening the road to four lanes for the remaining 60 miles could cost $191 million, state highway officials say.

That could be a hard sell because few people live in that area, Green said.

Federal money needed

Progress comes at a price, he says. He hopes that Southeast Missouri's congressional delegation can get federal money earmarked for some of the work. But he admits it could be 15 years before four lanes of highway extend across all of southern Missouri.

"We have a lot of needs out there and not enough money to meet them all," said Scott Meyer, MoDOT district engineer in Sikeston.

A 48-mile stretch of U.S. 60 from Sikeston to Poplar Bluff took nearly a decade to complete at a cost of $66 million. The final 13-mile section of that stretch of highway was paved in 1997.

Once a hard hour's drive, motorists can cruise from Sikeston to Poplar Bluff in 45 minutes on a highway that carries a 65-mph speed limit. As many as 20,000 vehicles a day travel through Sikeston on U.S. 60, Green says.

As for Hanes, he thinks of Nunley's senseless death when he drives on the new highway, which won an award from the American Concrete Paving Association for smoothness.

"It is a whole lot better road than a lot of the interstates," he said.