OAK RIDGE INTERCHANGE IS SET FOR 2000

The recent announcement that the Missouri Department of Transportation has placed the I-55/Route E interchange, better known as the Oak Ridge interchange, on its construction schedule for 2000 caught quite a few folks by surprise.

No one was more pleasantly surprised than the folks who live and work in the Oak Ridge area and have been trying -- since 1969 for some -- to get the interchange built. Some residents of that area recall that the interstate connection for their community was part of the original design of I-55, but it was never built. Organized efforts in more recent years didn't appear to be moving the project forward very rapidly, although MoDOT asked the Cape Girardeau County Commission in 1995 to choose between the Oak Ridge interchange and another one for the planned East Main Street extension in Jackson. The commission reluctantly chose the Oak Ridge project even though the commissioners said they thought both projects were important.

And there was a certain degree of surprise over the interchange announcement among city and county officials who have been working for weeks trying to figure out a highway plan for moving traffic east and west between Cape Girardeau and points west of Jackson, mainly along the Highway 34-72 corridor that currently goes through Jackson.

That effort has mushroomed into a catch-all proposal that covers just about every idea on anybody's wish list for highways in this area. Curiously, the Oak Ridge interchange wasn't on the 19-point proposal that was presented at a public meeting last week.

Part of the reason may be that there is so much confusion about MoDOT's construction schedule in the wake of revelations in 1996 that the statewide 15-year highway plan was going to come up woefully short on funding, even though Missourians are paying higher fuel taxes to pay for all those projects. At one point, MoDOT officials and others were saying the unfinished 15-year plan would have to be scrapped. That thinking was enforced by Gov. Mel Carnahan's appointment of a Total Transportation Commission charged with the task of coming up with a comprehensive plan that included highway projects. In fact, it is becoming more and more apparent that the alarm over the presumed underfunding of the 15-year plan was premature. MoDOT has continued to proceed with projects in that plan as funding has become available -- including the Oak Ridge interchange.

For Oak Ridge, the new interchange will mean an end to driving several miles south or north to get on I-55. Of particular concern has been the accessibility of the community to emergency vehicles. If all goes as planned, those concerns should be eliminated in about two years.