Summary:

The Missouri Department of Transport (MODoT) engages in a detailed, long term planning process to determine problems, needs, and potential solutions to meet Missouri's changing transportation requirements. The Department has recently increased its planning staff and charged them with the critical mission of projecting patterns and usage 15 to 20 years into the future.

Planning and forecasting involves five specific steps. The first is to develop working parameters. This includes identifying issues and concerns, and collecting the initial data which forms a statistical, demographic, and management framework. Public and community involvement is critical to developing a work plan. People who use the transportation infrastructure can provide first hand critiques of its current status and must buy in to plans to change or modify their accustomed routes. Secondly, people must have a tangible plan to see and to evaluate before they are willing to support a project.

The second step is to draft problem definitions, including setting goals and objectives, and identifying problems from both the public and technical perspectives. Public perspectives might include general demographics, land use, and environment. Technical perspectives are analyzed in ranking order by set parameters:

Preservation of infrastructure -- use what exists, avoid tearing down just to replace; Safety - concern for the public's safety when using facilities; changing existing structures or roadways to increase safe usage; Congestion - identifying congested areas and projecting where congestion may develop in the future, and devising techniques for mitigating such congestion; Access - access to and from the project, or along major feeder routes; Movement of Goods - how the project will enhance the movement of product; Sustainable Development - how the project will enhance sustainable, rather than wild-cat development in its proximity; Preservation - how the project will use existing rights of way to the fullest extent possible while preserving proximal property, facilities, and services.

The third phase of the plan is developing an initial strategy of technical measures. The evaluative measures considered are designed to avoid bias toward areas, geographical locations, and to minimize political-demographic influences.

The phase measures the proposed project's perceived effectiveness in accomplishing the goals and objectives stated. It considers the project's cost effectiveness to gauge value added relative to expenditures.

As a corollary, MODoT evaluates the project's financial feasibility, determining if the project merits the expenditure of funds from a limited and highly competitive pool. To determine feasibility, the project must fit into a statewide plan, and thus MODoT must assess relative equity of allocating resources to it, rather than some other need. And lastly, in order to determine equity, the department must analyze potential trade offs, changing time schedules, ranking priorities, and making exchanges among projects to meet the most critical needs. This stage is targeted at developing a "reasonable set of strategies."

These steps lay the foundation for developing specific Screening Criteria, the fourth phase of planning. At this point the process becomes very detailed, involving current analysis and forecasting travel patterns and usage up to twenty years out. A concurrent study examines the project engineering constraints, considering materials and techniques, integration of proposed projects with existing infrastructure, and meticulously detailed flow studies.

Last in the process comes the final analysis of the strategy. This includes the project's conceptual design. It involves a through transportation and traffic impact analysis including traffic flow, pollutant impact, and congestion forecasting. A detailed and thorough environmental analysis including environmental impact statements must be prepared. Current and projected land use in the vicinity of the project must be examined. Lastly the Department must analyze the future costs of operating and maintaining the roadways and access points once the project is completed. This is a key factor, since the same pool of money which funds new construction also largely funds the day-to-day upkeep of existing infrastructure. Thus the balance of funds is critical.

MODoT has identified several critical areas which are part of its overall management process. Congestion Management is broadly defined as developing systems to improve accessibility and mobility by assessing the impact of congestion and developing techniques to minimize highway bog-downs. The objective is to improve the facilities people use to reach their place of employment, healthcare, and commerce. Usually congestion management involves a regional focus, not just isolated areas to assess the broad impact of congestion. It's easy to say I-70 is congested at rush hour but it is also necessary to develop regional performance data to detect and remedy wide spread problem areas. Strategies evolve to mitigate recurring and non-recurring problems. Short-term congestion attributable to maintenance and repair, emergency situations, and new construction may be handled by short-term alternatives. Major recurrent congestion may require a regional plan to decrease the per-hour flow of traffic past any one of a number of points.

Statistics measure a number of parameters to determine the degree of congestion:

Volume to Capacity -- the number of vehicles on a selected highway versus the Total number of vehicles the section is capable of handling. Density -- number of vehicles per mile. Speed -- reductions of mobility as a result of congestion. Vehicle Miles Traveled -- miles traveled regionally by the typical vehicle. Peak Load -- Passengers per public transportation vehicle. Park and Ride Lot Usage -- Spaces occupied versus spaces available Person Through Put -- The number of people past a certain point per hour.

The measures employed to judge congestion are then used to suggest remedies. Remedies are tested with before and after studies to evaluate results. MODoT's Congestion Mitigation Handbook considers multiple potential solutions including such techniques as reversible lanes, re-striping, alternate routes, and encouragement of ride sharing. The handbook emphasizes alternative measures and operates under the basic philosophy that it is impossible to build your way out of congestion without implementing other plans and techniques.

The Pavement Management System is intended to, within a limited budget, maintain the state's inventory of pavement, including establishing a useful life, measuring usage against anticipated figures to project deterioration and need for maintenance, and determining the remedial steps or repair needed. The system seeks a balanced approach to preserving Missouri's roadways. The traditional approach was to concentrate on heavily traveled or severely damaged facilities. The network approach strives for balance, addressing critical areas, but allowing for attention to preventive as well as remedial steps, predicting deterioration, optimizing budget strategies and recommending rehabilitative and treatment system-wide.

The Bridge Management System concentrates on what has traditionally been a serious problem in Missouri. The system calls for regular inspection and tracking of bridge use and trouble. To effectively manage the bridging system the state uses modeling and simulations for a given bridge, selects among several options to determine the most cost effective solutions to problems, studies rates of deterioration and projects costs for maintenance and repair, and recommends projects of varying scale, from small repair to major replacement if needed.

Action is dependent on many factors. The overall need for continuing maintenance and the backlog of current and deferred projects must be balanced against the adequacy of funding. Qualitative evaluations must judge long-term needs including the difficult decision to either wait on a project and possibly have to replace an entire structure a few years down the line, or undertake major repairs to extend a structure's useful, though temporary life. With bridges, as with highways, preservation of infrastructure is given priority, with safety a close second in weighting allocations from the transportation budget.

MODoT's statement on urban sprawl is centered on the philosophy that infrastructure does not create sprawl. People make living choices based on cultural, social, educational, economic, and personal preference, and counties and municipalities determine land use in sovereign areas, not MODoT. MODoT's concern therefore is of a system-wide scope, and is centered on maximizing the efficiency of intrastate and interstate transportation of people, and goods wherever they may be.

From a local perspective, managing transportation is a multi-level, multi-jurisdictional, and highly complex process, involving local, state, and federal mixing. A great deal of the revenue generated for transportation infrastructure arises from gasoline taxes -- 17 cents per gallon state tax, and 18 cents per gallon federal tax. Of Missouri's 17 cents, five cents is allocated to local roads, and twelve cents is allocated to maintaining the state highway transportation programs. Since Missouri has one of the nation's largest inventories of state roadways, and maintenance of existing rights of way consumes such a large portion of the budget, new construction is highly dependent on federal cost sharing, traditionally 20 percent local and state funding, 80 percent federal. Despite the 1987 voter approved four-cent per gallon increase in gasoline tax, and the two cents per gallon added legislatively in 1995, 1994, and 1996, the fifteen year plan promised to voters in 1987 likely cannot be funded from existing revenues.

The federal Transportation Equity Act for the Twenty-First Century may have a positive effect on federal sharing, increasing the percentage of Missouri collections that actually return to the state. One provision of this act guarantees that the 18 cents collected is fully spent out. Under previous statutes, portions of the fund in trust could be held back, and the surplus appeared to reduce the federal deficit. Previous collections still remain in the fund, but new collections must be allocated. As a result, Missouri may receive as much as 92 cents back on each dollar collected. The vagaries of federal budgeting may reduce this rebate somewhat, to around 87 cents, because approved obligation ceilings are usually less than authorization levels. For details of the Transportation Equity Act, see:

The litany of federal laws, regulations and standards, which affect local transportation, is seemingly. endless. Clean Air Conformity Requirements of the Transportation Act mandate that whatever improvements are done must not increase pollution above its current level. Therefore a regional picture is absolutely mandatory, because pollution caused by automobiles stranded in congested traffic may be much more concentrated than an even greater numbers of vehicles travelling smoothly past the same point. The National Environmental Policy Act requires Environmental Impact Studies on every project -- the one for the proposed Page Extension took five years, plus an additional two years for supplemental studies -- and the number of agencies involved includes the Park Service, Environmental Protection Agency, Corps of Engineers, and the Fish and Wildlife Service, to name just a few.

Historically, the six-member Missouri Highway and Transportation Commission, an independent body, evaluated and prioritized highway projects. Thus, from the local perspective, securing approval functionally meant convincing six people that the need was great and justified. The Surface Transportation Efficiency Act however changed, at least in the St. Louis Metropolitan area, procedures to add the East-West Gateway Coordinating Council as an additional layer of opinion. Thus, both East-West Gateway and the Commission determine funding allocations, and therefore, it is vitally important for localities to be involved during the Council's planning and evaluation processes, not just during the decision phases. Transportation Investment Analysis provision places additional constraints on new construction in that it requires that before any new design can be approved, all other choices must be fully evaluated and found to be insufficient and incapable of meeting the need. Furthermore, all voting parties must be unanimous in their agreement. A dissenting vote will cancel or delay the project.

The County's Local Arterial Road System, and county roads and bridges are funded, in large part, by the voter approved one-half cent sales tax. The County Road Board recommends how revenue should be spent, establishing priorities based on and ranked by need. The priorities often look years into the future, and because of this, are subject to change. These local thoroughfares will be come more and more critical as traffic feeding onto them from I-70, I-370, Highway 40-61 continues to increase. Mexico Road, Highway 94, Highway 79 north of I70 are already ranked as congested roadways. Any interchange along I-70 is usually over capacitated, as are the streets they feed onto -- Fifth Street, First Capitol, Zumbehl Road, Cave Springs Blvd, Mid-Rivers Mall Drive, Main Street in O'Fallon.

A 1987 East-West Gateway Coordinating Council determined surely that the Blanchette Bridge was over congested, and theorizes that unless the region develops a way to spread rush hour over the entire day, by 2005 bridge traffic will never run smoothly. By 2015, all interstate highways will be fully congested. Other surveys indicate that bridge traffic increases by 7,000 units per day each year. Even though the new Discovery Bridge carrying I-370 over the Missouri River handles 25,000 more cars than did the old 115 Bridge, Blanchette usage continues to climb. The Daniel Boone Bridge on Highway 40 already carries far more traffic than projected, and may well be obsolete because of its self-limiting design and structure. The I-70 Mitigation Study analyzed traffic flow, and projects that for I-70 traffic to flow with even reasonable efficiency, it will be necessary to establish one-way service roads, and very likely to establish a county freeway system in the 94 corridor, and probably east-west as well.

These are potentially mitigating factors, but only the Page Extension hold much hope for relieving current and projected congestion along I-70. Projections have established that Page Avenue would likely carry 75,000 to 85,000 vehicles daily, about 40 percent of the traffic currently crossing the Missouri River on I-70. It would be designed to "capture" eastbound traffic at 40/61 and divert it south toward a Harvester access to St. Charles County, or across the river to a mid-county access to St. Louis. At the same time, it could also increase traffic across the Boone Bridges, which as noted before, may not be able to carry the load. Thus, the Page Extension will certainly divert traffic from I-70, but may result in Highway 40 becoming an equivalent focus of congestion. Since it's likely not feasible to build river crossings either north or south the existing structures, it's probable that new, higher capacity bridges will have to be built along side of and replace the existing Daniel Boone bridge stystem.

Regional cooperation toward the Page Extension has been good. However, St. Louis County does have a referendum which asks the voters to decide if the St. Louis County Council should grant easements through Creve Coeur Park to the state, for the Page Extension. The Council has agreed to the easements, but voters are concerned about the impact on the park and may overturn the Council's decision. The same referendum asks if the county should accept the land proffered to replace park property affected by the extension project. If voters reject the transfer of easements, the State of Missouri could obtain the property through eminent domain, but the process is time-consuming and expensive, and would undoubtedly delay the project. Additionally, if they reject the transfer of compensatory land, the area surrounding the extension could not meet the provisions of the federal Pipeline Safety Act, and the project would have to cease development. At present, though existing set of agreements are firm and cooperation is strong, if any of the parties withdraw their support, the extension could be functionally dead.

Mass transportation is virtually non-existent in St. Charles County. Bi-state runs a few busses to St. Louis and St. Louis County, but there is a distinct absence of intra-county transport. One study estimated that operating costs for a trans-county bus system traveling the I-70 corridor would exceed one million dollars a year.. To operate north-south links would more than double that cost. Unfortunately, studies also confirm that people need Demand Responsive Systems, those offering neighborhood pick up and delivery, not just corridor systems that require personal transportation to a central entry or exit system.

The County cannot afford to operate such a system, the state cannot contribute to developing one, and as Bi-State's operations indicate, mass transit has severe difficulty operating on a pay-as-you-go basis.

Missouri is one of six states that do not allocate a portion gas tax or general revenue to mass transit. Since the distribution of gasoline taxes is set within the state constitution, changing the formula would require statewide passage of a constitutional amendment. Analysis indicates that urban areas might support such an amendment, most of the state would see it as urban subsidization with no benefit to them, and therefore the proposal would likely fail. A portion of the federal gas tax does go to mass transit, but it traditionally is allocated almost purely to capital improvements and acquisitions. Very little if any federal revenue is allocated to operating existing systems.

Issues:

Planning is a time consuming, laborious process subject to every vagary of process and procedure, political influence, and regulation. If a plan for a bridge was set today, the first car would travel its length in about fifteen years.

Congestion on interstate highways and major thoroughfares is a regional problem that cannot be viewed provincially. At the same time, the status and effectiveness of local roads and streets distinctly affects mobility on those highways. If interchanges cannot handle the volume of entering or exiting traffic because the connecting roads cannot handle the number of vehicles flowing onto them, the overflow has to back up onto the major highways.

Demographic projections for St. Charles County indicate heavy development will continue within the Golden Triangle. More homes and residences, more business and commercial enterprise will increase traffic, and already congested roads -- Highway 94, Mexico Road, either I-70 service road, Highway K, -- will become even less effective. Alternative routes -- possibly a trans-county freeway -- must be sought.

Proponents of sprawl theory view traffic congestion, and indeed deliberately retarding the smooth and orderly flow of traffic as powerful weapons against urban sprawl. Their solution is simple -- If people have a really miserable time getting from St. Charles County to St. Louis, they'll either stay in St. Louis or move from St. Charles to St. Louis to avoid traffic. Therefore, a regional perspective is paramount. The urban sprawl controversy will continue, especially as growth patterns push further west and into Lincoln and Warren Counties.

St. Charles County will continue to be automobile dependent. County-wide mass transit is, at best, years away and likely will never be practical. State tax funds are not available; a constitutional amendment to divert tax money from highways to mass transit likely would not pass; federal money supports infrastructure not operations; and self-supporting enterprises are the exception, not the rule.

Continued economic growth and development of businesses is highly correlated with customer access to the business site, and the ability to get goods delivered for sale or processing. Congested highways and local roads decrease profit potential and incentive to locate business in the area.