MEETING WILL ADDRESS WIDENING HIGHWAY 34

JACKSON -- Missouri highway officials will meet from 5:30 to 8 Wednesday night at the Jackson Middle School cafeteria with property owners who might be affected by the improvement of Highway 34.

Missouri Department of Transportation officials and their consultants will be on hand to discuss details of the recommendation to upgrade Highway 34 (West Jackson Boulevard) from two to five lanes. The recommendation to be discussed calls for widening Highway 34 from Highway 25 to where highways 34 and 72 split west of Jackson.

"It's basically just upgrading the existing roadway," said Angie Wilson of MoDOT.

The recommended improvement would require additional rights of way and the purchase of a number of homes and businesses, MoDOT officials have said.

Preliminary cost estimate for the project is $16 million to $17 million, Wilson said.

The recommendation to widen Highway 34 to five lanes was part of an original package of nine alternatives aimed at easing traffic congestion between Cape Girardeau and Jackson. Some of the other alternatives would require new alignments to create a bypass around much of heavily traveled Highway 34.

State highway officials told local officials at a Sept. 22 meeting that they were considering dropping the bypass options.

The bypass was one of three top-priority projects for local officials that included an East Main interchange with Interstate 55 and improvements to the I-55-U.S. 61 interchange known as Center Junction between Cape Girardeau and Jackson.

"This study had a specific purpose, and a lot of the other issues that are being brought up are not directly related to the study," Wilson said.

She said MoDOT will continue to meet with local officials to discuss their concerns about road project priorities.

No formal presentation is planned Wednesday, said project manager DawnRae Clark, but MoDOT will gather input and answer questions from concerned property owners.