MoDOT drops idea of Highway 74, Route K loop

The Missouri Department of Transportation has dropped the idea of building an outer loop that would connect Highway 74 with Route K in Cape Girardeau and relieve some of the through traffic in Jackson.

Cape Girardeau Mayor Al Spradling III said he was not surprised by MoDOT's decision.

Spradling said MoDOT shunned the idea in the past, but Cape Girardeau, along with Jackson and Cape Girardeau County officials, had asked that it still consider the proposition.

In a letter submitted to various city, county and state officials, Scott Meyer, district engineer with MoDOT, said that the cost of the proposed road "greatly outweighed the benefit to the state highway system."

Highway 74 was built six years ago to connect the Bill Emerson Memorial Bridge -- which is scheduled for completion in the fall 2003 -- and Interstate 55. Spradling and others believe that the new bridge along with the widening of highways 34 and 72 outside of Jackson to four lanes will increase traffic. The proposed loop in Cape Girardeau would have directed the traffic flow around Jackson, Spradling said.

"I don't know if it's what I'd call a huge disappointment," Spradling said. "But it seems to me that a new route makes more sense than to put all those cars through the middle of Jackson. Now we have this new highway that stubs out in a cornfield. But we did get a highway from the bridge to 55, and that's important."

Officials with MoDOT have complained for lack of funding for quite some time. MoDOT says Missouri has the seventh-largest state highway system in the nation but ranks 45th in revenue invested per mile.