Route AB plan ready, officials say

After years of discussion and planning, the extension of Nash Road through undeveloped land to Blomeyer appears ready to happen, say Missouri Department of Transportation and Cape Girardeau County officials.

The project has been talked about for almost 10 years, since around the time Route AB was built eastward to the Southeast Missouri Regional Port Authority in 1999. In those years the route Nash Road's westward expansion will take has changed a few times, most recently to avoid cutting a piece of prime industrial real estate in two, a change that occurred last fall.

"I don't really know how long it's been talked about," said Cape Girardeau County Commissioner Larry Bock, the county official who's taken the lead on the joint county/MoDOT project. "But good things don't happen fast. It takes a long time."

MoDOT reached an agreement with the county on the joint project in 2001. Public meetings were held and plans were drawn up before county commissioners expressed concern about cutting the industrial property in two, creating the need to change the route. The project was originally scheduled for completion last year.

County government has already taken the first steps to build the route, which will take Nash Road about 4.25 miles (with two turns) to an intersection with Highway 77/25 at Blomeyer. As part of the project, County Road 220 will be dead-ended at its crossing on the Burlington Northern Santa Fe rail line, but MoDOT project manager Andy Meyer said the property owners adjacent to the road will have easy access to Route AB.

The road had to be dead-ended because the AB extension will cross the tracks, and federal regulators wouldn't allow a rail crossing to be added in the area.

The county is now putting together a legal description of the property it needs to acquire to make the road a reality. Bock said he hopes that process will take no more than six months.

The county is responsible for building embankments that will protect the road from flooding and for laying down a gravel roadbed, after which MoDOT will pave the road and accept it into the state road system.

Property at Blomeyer has already been acquired, said Meyer, but MoDOT will hold off on the work until all the needed property is acquired.

"Right now it is in the hands of the county," Meyer said.

MoDOT will pay $800,000 to build the intersection at Highway 25/77 and $3 million for paving, while the county is responsible for the estimated $2 million to purchase rights of way and build the embankments.

Last Thursday, U.S. Sen. Kit Bond announced he had inserted $760,000 for the project and $1 million for improvements at the SEMO Port into a Senate Transportation, Housing and Urban Development Appropriations Subcommittee spending bill, citing the potential for industrial growth. The money made it out of committee intact and now must be voted on by the full Senate. Bond's office said it's unknown when that vote will take place.

Under the agreement struck between MoDOT and Cape Girardeau County for construction of the road, the county will take over maintenance of the outer road on the southwest part of I-55 at the Route AB exit, and MoDOT will take over maintenance of the extended portion of Route AB.

SEMO Port director Dan Overbey said the port's part of Bond's funds will go to pay for expansion of the port's River Road, which runs along the Mississippi River to the north and west of the main port facilities and currently serves SEMO Milling's corn milling operation. The money also will be used to pave other existing roads.

U.S. Rep. Jo Ann Emerson also secured $1 million for the Nash Road project in fiscal year 2005.

Supporters of the project say the money will be well spent, citing numerous benefits.

Chief among them may be relieving congestion on Interstate 55 between Highway 74 and Route AB. A recent MoDOT traffic study found that the area between Highway 74 and just south of Scott City is the most congested stretch of I-55 in Southeast Missouri. By making Route AB a through road leading to the SEMO Port, trucks that now have to enter I-55 at Highway 74 will be able to bypass the interstate, cutting a path straight though from Highway 77/25 to the SEMO Port.

The route is typically used by farmers bringing grain trucks from Highway 25 to the port from farming areas to the south.

"This extension of AB keeps those heavy trucks off the interstate," Meyer said. "It keeps the slow-moving local traffic off the interstate, traffic that can cause congestion and could cause accidents."

Mitch Robinson, director of the industrial recruiting group Cape Girardeau Area Magnet, said the extension could open up land for an unknown number of new industries at the industrial park, provide improved access to more than 1,000 acres in the area and allow continued growth to the west, since the industrial park is bordered by I-55 on the east.

After years of waiting, Robinson said he's confident the current incarnation of the project will go forward. "Within the next couple of years we'll see that road built," Robinson said.

Meyer said MoDOT hopes to pave the extension in 2009.

msanders@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 182