State Senator Promotes a Toll on I-70

The legislature will be asked next year to ask voters if they’d like to turn Missouri’s main interstate highway into a toll road. Interstate 70 runs through the heart of the district of Senator Matt Bartle of Lee’s Summit. “People are tired of I-70 and its inadequacy,” he says. Bartle wants to send a constitutional change to voters in 2006, allowing limited use of toll roads and toll bridges. He hopes voters say “yes” so work can begin making I-70 into a six-lane, new highway across Missouri. Bartle believes the idea might pass, where other proposals have failed or never made it to the ballot. Bartle says the original pavement of I-70 is 40 or 50 years old now and is so beaten up that resurfacing with asphalt is just pouring good money after bad. Bartle admits it will take years to rebuild I-70, even if the legisalture and voters approve his idea.