The Missouri Transportation Department hopes to decide by the end of September which projects will be awarded funding through its cost share program. MODOT Director Patrick McKenna tells Missourinet more than 100 applications have been submitted for the Missouri Moves program, which would allow local governments to split with the state the cost of local infrastructure projects. More than $72 million in funding requests have been made, which surpasses the $20 million put into the program by the legislature and Governor Jay Nixon.

Photo courtesy of MODOT

Photo courtesy of MODOT

“What it does is it sets up a lot of disappointment too. There’s certainly a lot of needs out there, as expressed by the applicants. More applicants will get rejected that accepted,” says McKenna. “We understand that there is a great gap in need for transportation projects relative to the funding that exists today.”

The cost share program was re-launched this fiscal year, after a two year hiatus.

McKenna says the department will be fair when deciding which projects to select.

“The geographic distribution is that no one district can receive more than 25% of the funding. Three of our districts are primarily urban and four of them are primarily rural,” says McKenna.

Two-thirds of the program’s funding will go to road and bridge work, with the rest to things like pedestrian and bicycle paths.

The St. Louis district submitted the most applications, with 30 totaling $23.3 million in projects. The northwest district had six applications worth $6.6 million. The northeast district submitted eight applications, with a total request of $2.6 million. The Kansas City district had 18 applications, totaling $15.4 million. The central district submitted 16 applications, worth nearly $9 million. The southwest district’s 14 applications included $13.1 million in funding requests. The southeast district had 10 applications with $2.2 million in total requests.

The deadline to submit applications was the end of July. Local projects awarded funding must spend it by the end of the fiscal year, which is June 30.