WATCH OUT: MODOT WANTS LOTS OF MONEY

When the Missouri Department of Transportation got around to telling the public about its plans for Interstate 70, the main east-west highway link between the state's two largest urban areas, the numbers were staggering.

MoDOT said it favors turning the four-lane interstate into a six-lane highway for the 200 miles between Lake Saint Louis, Mo., on the western edge of the St. Louis metropolitan area and Independence, Mo., and the eastern edge of the Kansas City metropolitan area. That alone raised eyebrows, since there aren't many examples of rural six-lane interstates anywhere in the nation. A MoDOT official conceded: "We are kind of out front."

But the bigger bugaboo was the estimated cost of adding lanes to I-70: $2.5 billion to $3 billion.

There is no question that I-70 is a busy highway. Motorists from Southeast Missouri who, before interstates, might have taken highways angling across the state to get to Kansas City, routinely drive to St. Louis and take I-70 because it's an easier and quicker drive -- just like the countless motorists who go to St. Louis to catch I-44 to get to Springfield, Mo.

And truck traffic is heavy on I-70. Almost any time of the day or night, passenger vehicles must share the lanes with long lines of semi-trailer rigs.

But between Wentzville, Mo., and Oak Grove, Mo., traffic along I-70 rarely bunches up so much that motorists have to go slower than the 70-mph limit, although speeds drop a bit through Columbia, Mo. Most interstate travelers set their cruise controls on 75 mph -- or more -- and don't spend much time braking because of slower vehicles.

In its current master plan, MoDOT estimates it will fall $1.5 billion short each year over the next 20 years in meeting the most pressing needs of Missouri's various transportation systems, including highways. Hundreds of bridges are deficient. Potholes are everywhere on heavily traveled roads.

So the question is simple: How can MoDOT push for a $3 billion project to widen I-70 when there is such a shortfall in maintaining what highways and bridges we already have?

There is no easy answer. It would be easy to suspect, however, that when MoDOT starts throwing around numbers like $1.5 billion-a-year shortfalls and $3 billion interstate projects, the real aim is to condition taxpayers to the fact that the state will be coming after their money -- and lots of it.