Modern I-66 routing

By Peter C. Myers, Sr.

I read with great interest Walter Wildman's sincere article about Sikeston's attempt to "steal" the I-66 route. Mayor Mike Marshall of Sikeston is not trying to steal the I-66 project. He's just making it more feasible and beneficial for more of the area's and nation's citizens. Times and conditions have changed since 1991.

In the interim between 1991 and 1998, the fact surfaced that the originally proposed I-66 highway would have to cross the Shawnee National Forest as well as designated wetlands in Illinois. This made the routing very difficult and subject to legitimate attack by environmental interests.

My family and I used the eastern end of I-66 many times at the beginning of our travels home from Washington, D.C., for seven years while serving in the federal government. I was always frustrated by the western end of the trip when we had to travel those two narrow bridges to get from Kentucky to Missouri. This was always difficult at Christmas under icy conditions

During the past eight years I listened with great interest while my friend and legislative traveling partner, Lanie Black, (we were state representatives for eight years) would visit every Monday morning by cell phone with officials in the Kentucky Department of Transportation about I-66 crossing the Mississippi River at Wickcliff, Ky. We both attended many meetings of the I-66/U.S. 60 corridor from 1998 to 2006, and rarely if ever did we hear of the proposed routing through Cape Girardeau. Mike Marshall wasn't even mayor at the beginning of that period.

In addition to the tragedy of the bridge collapse in Minnesota, it became apparent that we had two old bridges at the southern tip of Illinois that needed replacing.

Try telling the young man who had his pickup truck crunched by a semi while driving in broad daylight across the Illinois-Missouri bridge that we don't need a new, wider, safer bridge. As he watched his spare tire flying into the mighty Mississippi, he realized that he could have been that flying object.

Isn't it time for the residents of the Cape Girardeau area to become regional team players and not try to drag everything through Cape Girardeau? I learned in high school geometry that a straight line is the shortest distance between two points. Wickcliff to Wyatt is that straight line.

Representative Black and I, as members of the House Budget Committee, have always taken a regional approach to supporting improvements to our area. Funding for the river port on Nash Road at the south edge of Cape Girardeau County is a great example of a regional benefit. In addition, we were key players in the House in supporting funding to pay off the bonds for the River Campus at Southeast Missouri University.

All of us folks in Scott, Mississippi, New Madrid and other adjacent counties will still continue to shop and eat in Cape Girardeau and pay Cape's new sales tax without too much fuss. Why, then, can't we get together on a regional approach to the bridge project at Wickcliff?

We recognize that it will take a combination of state, federal and maybe bonding funds with a toll bridge to get this project off the ground. It would be much easier for our two Missouri senators and our Congresswoman if we would present a united front on this effort.

If Republicans and Democrats can be together, as we are, from Wickcliff to Springfield, Mo., why can't two neighboring cities and counties in Missouri agree to support a new bridge across the Mississippi River in the Wickcliff/Wyatt area to replace two obsolete and dangerous bridges?

Peter Myers of Sikeston was a U.S. Department of Agriculture official during the Reagan administration and is a former state representative.