The state transportation department hopes the people will somehow provide the money needed to repair and replace Missouri’s major bridges.
The department’s Chief engineer, Kevin Keith, says the state will need tens of millions of dollars in the next decade to address the most serious needs of its major bridges–bridges at least one thousand feet long. There are fifty-three cross the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers. It will take a lot of money to put them into first-class shape. Keith estimates the cost in the next years ago one-half billion dollars.
He knows Missourians are notoriously tight-fisted when it comes to transportation expenses. But, he says, it, there are no free lunches and no free bridges.
Some of our bridges date from the days of the Model T and six-wheeled trucks. Keith says the average age of those 203 big bridges is 33…and they carry an average of 21-thousand vehicles a day.
Download Bob Priddy’s story (:61 mp3)
