STATE HEARS IDEAS ON SCOTT CITY-CAPE ROAD

SCOTT CITY -- A steady stream of people kept Missouri Department of Transportation representatives busy at a meeting Thursday night to determine interest in a new road between Scott City and Cape Girardeau.

Groups as large as 30 gathered at various times during the three-hour session at Scott City High School. Participants pointed out their ideas for alternative routes between the two cities.

Scott City first appealed to the highway department in the 1980s for an alternate route to ease residents' dependency on I-55. The highway department held the meeting in response to Scott City's desire for a road. The request first made it to the highway department's planning schedule in 1992.

"There have been a lot of comments about extending Route N in some fashion by maybe intersecting with Nash Road and heading northward toward Highway 74," department project manager DawnRae Clark Fuller said. "There are also a lot of people that favor Highway 61, at least in some form or fashion."

Councilman J.T. Gulley said, "We need to get the congestion out of the west end of town," referring to the congested intersection between Interstate 55, Main Street and Highway 61 south on a map. "I'd like to see it come off of Cape Street. That's the one that's basically in the center of town."

Cape and Mullberry streets and Route N were all suggested as east-end streets that could be extended to the nearly completed Nash Road north of town. Gulley said Cape Street, which has only one block of houses, could be extended through an area of virtually undeveloped land to a point just east of where Lady Luck Gaming Inc. hopes to place a casino boat on the Diversion Channel.

"That would provide an alternate route for Scott City residents out to the boat," he said. A Cape Street extension would be about one and one-half miles to Nash Road.

The route would continue west on Nash Road to where it intersects with the old Highway 61 roadbed. It would turn north and follow that road into Cape Girardeau. A new bridge would have to be built over the Diversion Channel, but any route would require that.

Gulley said he saw promise for a road like that for other than alleviating the traffic problem. The undeveloped land could lend itself to businesses, and the route would form a circle from the industrial area north of Scott City through the heart of the town.

In 1981, a tanker truck was involved in an accident on the interstate a mile from the Scott City exit. The truck spilled more than 200 gallons of corrosive liquid onto the interstate, and some Scott City residents said they were trapped by not having another way to leave the city.

Fuller said it would probably take more than five years to develop a plan, though some factors might influence the department into pushing that schedule.

"There's a limitation within our department on how fast we can produce plans," she said. "If we have a lot of public support, I'm sure that would influence our decision. If the casino boat goes in, we will definitely start making improvements to the Route AB interchange, and that will put more pressure on us to finish this project."