I-70

[aknowledgeableperson]

I imagine everybody on this board has been driving all over I-70 for years. I'm not sure anybody's anecdotes are more meaningful than anybody else's, but I can safely say I've never been stuck behind a truck for a half hour. But even if it really is common to get stuck behind a truck for that long, you only lose about six minutes at 55mph vs. 70mph. It's not worth billions of dollars to save you six minutes. According to MoDot's own estimates about the costs of congestion on I-70 (only about $30-35M/year), it's not worth billions of dollars even to save everybody on I-70 six minutes apiece.

It isn't so much as just you behind a truck. What happens a lot is there can be a line of cars, and trucks, behind that one truck passing another. You are in the middle of that line with others behind you. And of course the trucks lose speed going up the hills.

[brewcrew1000]

I'm not worried about losing time, I just want to make it to st Louis alive. I hate driving side by side next to cars and semis, it's super dangerous, a blowout by a semi and u are next to that semi it's pretty good odds that semi bumps u

[brewcrew1000]

Truck should not be allowed to drive in the left lane, ever.

They seem to do this in Europe and the traffic flows beautifully

[taxi]

Truck should not be allowed to drive in the left lane, ever.

They seem to do this in Europe and the traffic flows beautifully

Exactly.

[beautyfromashes]

I'm not worried about losing time, I just want to make it to st Louis alive. I hate driving side by side next to cars and semis, it's super dangerous, a blowout by a semi and u are next to that semi it's pretty good odds that semi bumps u

I’ve driven all over the country and it’s one of, if not the #1, place I feel is most dangerous. There’s times you’re actually pinned in like a nascar race. Closer to St. Louis, they cut the center median for a concrete wall. And wrecks every time I drive it. I’d take the train if it wasn’t such a super car dependent city.

[mean]

If only it was a few moments.

It is only a few moments, though. It doesn't actually take very long for one truck to pass another and move back over. It doesn't meaningfully delay the drivers who get stuck behind it. This is not a real problem and not worth spending billions of dollars to solve. Make safety improvements, sure (of course, the biggest safety improvement would be to invest in alternative modes so that fewer people are driving at all), but I-70 does not need extra lanes just because drivers don't like to shut off cruise control for a minute.

And with adaptive cruise, you don't even have to worry about it. You just automatically slow down a little for a minute and then get over and pass when it's clear. It's surprising how effective this is, at least for me, at eliminating an irrational annoyance that I for the most part didn't even actively realize was happening every time I had to shut off cruise and wait for a column of traffic to go by, until I no longer had to. For me, it was never really annoyance that I had to go slower for a minute, just that I had to break out of my rhythm to do stuff. Now I don't have to, and as much as I will never 100% trust the hardware and software systems that do it (or, well, for that matter, pretty much anything) being able to just monitor that nothing is going awry without actually intervening has been way more of a game changer than I expected.

[phuqueue]

The highway has outlived its lifespan and needs replacing. That's the bottom line. You have to keep reinvesting in infrastructure.

How much is the federal match?

Neither "replacing" nor "reinvesting" necessarily entail "expanding."

I imagine everybody on this board has been driving all over I-70 for years. I'm not sure anybody's anecdotes are more meaningful than anybody else's, but I can safely say I've never been stuck behind a truck for a half hour. But even if it really is common to get stuck behind a truck for that long, you only lose about six minutes at 55mph vs. 70mph. It's not worth billions of dollars to save you six minutes. According to MoDot's own estimates about the costs of congestion on I-70 (only about $30-35M/year), it's not worth billions of dollars even to save everybody on I-70 six minutes apiece.

It isn't so much as just you behind a truck. What happens a lot is there can be a line of cars, and trucks, behind that one truck passing another. You are in the middle of that line with others behind you. And of course the trucks lose speed going up the hills.

And when the one truck passes the other truck, the whole line of cars speeds up to pass both trucks. Describing the situation in more detail (unnecessarily, I should add, because I am as familiar with this phenomenon as you and shinatoo and literally every other person who has ever driven on a highway) doesn't change the fact that you are ultimately describing a personal emotional problem (frustration), not a collective transportation problem. MoDot has already calculated that the annual cost of "congestion," such as it even exists on I-70, is orders of magnitude lower than the cost of the proposed solution. The number of additional cars between you and the truck is already baked into that calculation. Leave the house ten minutes earlier, do some deep breathing exercises when you start to feel stressed out, and save the rest of us thee billion dollars.

I'm not worried about losing time, I just want to make it to st Louis alive. I hate driving side by side next to cars and semis, it's super dangerous, a blowout by a semi and u are next to that semi it's pretty good odds that semi bumps u

I’ve driven all over the country and it’s one of, if not the #1, place I feel is most dangerous. There’s times you’re actually pinned in like a nascar race. Closer to St. Louis, they cut the center median for a concrete wall. And wrecks every time I drive it. I’d take the train if it wasn’t such a super car dependent city.

I lived in St. Louis for three years without a car, before shit like uber existed. It's not necessarily easy, but it's plenty doable (and I suspect much more so now if you are an uber or lyft user, though I am not). If you genuinely feel that your life is in danger on I-70 (and it's fair to feel that way -- more than 40,000 people die on American roads every year, which, to me, seems like a strong argument against further investment in car culture, not one in favor of expanding highways), take the train and endure the mild annoyance of waiting for your uber (or, god forbid!, Metrolink). Expanding the highway isn't going to stop you from driving side by side next to cars and semis anyway. You're not just going to have an empty buffer lane. New lanes will fill up with new traffic.

[beautyfromashes]

I lived in St. Louis for three years without a car, before shit like uber existed. It's not necessarily easy, but it's plenty doable (and I suspect much more so now if you are an uber or lyft user, though I am not). If you genuinely feel that your life is in danger on I-70 (and it's fair to feel that way -- more than 40,000 people die on American roads every year, which, to me, seems like a strong argument against further investment in car culture, not one in favor of expanding highways), take the train and endure the mild annoyance of waiting for your uber (or, god forbid!, Metrolink). Expanding the highway isn't going to stop you from driving side by side next to cars and semis anyway. You're not just going to have an empty buffer lane. New lanes will fill up with new traffic.

I only go to St Louis because we have family there, so Christmastime with packages and suitcases. God knows, I’d never go there otherwise. I hate it THAT MUCH and I’m always surprised how so very different two cities can be just on other sides of the same state.

I’m sure it Could be done, just not very easily and not without some major stress on my family. So I endure the stress of driving on that death trap highway hoping I can limit the risk by driving fairly conservatively and planning ahead in times I drive and where I stop. I’d personally feel more comfortable with that extra lane to hide away in from semis driving poorly and college kids racing back to Columbia.

[grovester]

Except it doesn't work that way. 3 lanes add a complexity that doesn't exist with 2 lanes.

You end up with trucks mostly in the right lane, most of the cars and passing trucks in the middle lane and 15-20 mph over the limit in the left.

Except for metro areas, I much prefer the 2 lane predictability.

Also problems on 2 lane stretches are less about trucks passing than cars never getting back into the right lane after passing.

[FlippantCitizen]

If only it was a few moments.

It is only a few moments, though. It doesn't actually take very long for one truck to pass another and move back over. It doesn't meaningfully delay the drivers who get stuck behind it. This is not a real problem and not worth spending billions of dollars to solve. Make safety improvements, sure (of course, the biggest safety improvement would be to invest in alternative modes so that fewer people are driving at all), but I-70 does not need extra lanes just because drivers don't like to shut off cruise control for a minute.

15 years of driving that route several times a month I can tell you that is not the case. Often times 20-30 minutes of driving behind two trucks side by side doing 55-60mph. Sometimes longer. Not to mention the narrow shoulders and the impact that has when there is, what should be, a relatively low-impact accident.

But as I said, 3 lanes all the way might be overkill, but the interstate needs to be rebuilt and upgraded, even if it's safety improvements and maybe some slip lanes.

Come on, really? I'm not saying it's not annoying to get caught behind a truck passing another truck with a 2mph speed differential. I agree, it is annoying as hell. But 20 to 30 minutes? Sorry I call BS. I don't think I've ever in my whole life experienced a 20 minute delay due to a single truck passing. And if truck traffic on the interstate causes the average one way drive time to be 20-30 minutes longer between KC and STL (a claim I would be more willing to accept as possibly true) then I seriously don't think that's a good reason to spend billions. In fact it is a foolish one.

[FlippantCitizen]

Except it doesn't work that way. 3 lanes add a complexity that doesn't exist with 2 lanes.

You end up with trucks mostly in the right lane, most of the cars and passing trucks in the middle lane and 15-20 mph over the limit in the left.

Except for metro areas, I much prefer the 2 lane predictability.

Also problems on 2 lane stretches are less about trucks passing than cars never getting back into the right lane after passing.

100% agree that I vastly prefer the predictability of two lanes on long interstate routes. Three lanes is just a license for people to do 100mph in the left lane. I do not feel safer on 3 lane interstate.

I'm not worried about losing time, I just want to make it to st Louis alive. I hate driving side by side next to cars and semis, it's super dangerous, a blowout by a semi and u are next to that semi it's pretty good odds that semi bumps u

Why would you drive side by side next to a semi? If you are about to pass a semi and another car is passing ahead of you but slowly just increase your following distance and hang back while the other car makes its pass and then when the slow passing car is finishing lay it on and pass promptly. I never get up next to a semi behind a slow passer then allow myself to be boxed into that by the car behind me. It is indeed very dangerous, but also completely avoidable. I get that this strategy is like "annoying" or incompatible with cruise control but I'm sorry people... cruise control isn't in the bill of rights. Y'all might actually have to actively drive your cars still. Just a thought.

[shinatoo]

It is only a few moments, though. It doesn't actually take very long for one truck to pass another and move back over. It doesn't meaningfully delay the drivers who get stuck behind it. This is not a real problem and not worth spending billions of dollars to solve. Make safety improvements, sure (of course, the biggest safety improvement would be to invest in alternative modes so that fewer people are driving at all), but I-70 does not need extra lanes just because drivers don't like to shut off cruise control for a minute.

15 years of driving that route several times a month I can tell you that is not the case. Often times 20-30 minutes of driving behind two trucks side by side doing 55-60mph. Sometimes longer. Not to mention the narrow shoulders and the impact that has when there is, what should be, a relatively low-impact accident.

But as I said, 3 lanes all the way might be overkill, but the interstate needs to be rebuilt and upgraded, even if it's safety improvements and maybe some slip lanes.

Come on, really? I'm not saying it's not annoying to get caught behind a truck passing another truck with a 2mph speed differential. I agree, it is annoying as hell. But 20 to 30 minutes? Sorry I call BS. I don't think I've ever in my whole life experienced a 20 minute delay due to a single truck passing. And if truck traffic on the interstate causes the average one way drive time to be 20-30 minutes longer between KC and STL (a claim I would be more willing to accept as possibly true) then I seriously don't think that's a good reason to spend billions. In fact it is a foolish one.

Really. Sometimes longer. I averaged 1.5 trips a month over 15 years, that's about 270 round trips or 540 oneway trips, saw a lot of things. Typically the longer 20+ minute clogs would involve multiple trucks jockeying. Thursday evenings were the worst for trucks, Fridays for cars. But I remember a handful of times doing 55-60 from Wentzville to Kingdom City because of trucks. Just a mass of a dozen trucks and 35-40 cars backed up behind them. The most dangerous part is when there is finally an opening and everyone starts driving like hell to get around. Western half past Columbia was never that bad, mainly because it's not as hilly.

They put in a slip lane on the long hill west of Danville and that really helped.

[aknowledgeableperson]

Leave the house ten minutes earlier, do some deep breathing exercises when you start to feel stressed out, and save the rest of us thee billion dollars.

Don't worry about me. I don't get stressed out. Driving rush hour traffic for a few decades, driving through construction zones with cars and trucks backed up over a mile, getting stuck behind wrecks and stopped for extended periods of time, and other things have taught me not to worry about things I cannot control.

[smh]

I think the problem with getting tolls approved is I-70 being in mostly rural areas where local drivers use it to go short distances from town-to-town and from their farms to a nearby town. That's where the politics come in since rural areas have an outsized influence in the state legislature.

If the gas tax were set at the right level, there would be more highway funding. It really needs to be changed from a gas tax to an annual mileage tax anyway. Gas taxes won't cut it in the future with electric cars.

This feels like it could be addressed by creating different tolling zones. So maybe between different exits in the same zone there is no toll, or a minimal toll (to try and direct at least some traffic to parallel state highways). I don't know the best method for I-70, but I'm sure there is a reasonable tolling level for people who make shorter trips every day. Though, speaking anecdotally, a lot of folks in Marshall where I have family don't use I-70 to get between nearby towns because you have to go 10 miles south to pick it up. On the other hand, it is 100% the way they get to Columbia for shopping, but that's 60-70 miles away. If you want to go that far, fast, a toll is reasonable!

[phuqueue]

I lived in St. Louis for three years without a car, before shit like uber existed. It's not necessarily easy, but it's plenty doable (and I suspect much more so now if you are an uber or lyft user, though I am not). If you genuinely feel that your life is in danger on I-70 (and it's fair to feel that way -- more than 40,000 people die on American roads every year, which, to me, seems like a strong argument against further investment in car culture, not one in favor of expanding highways), take the train and endure the mild annoyance of waiting for your uber (or, god forbid!, Metrolink). Expanding the highway isn't going to stop you from driving side by side next to cars and semis anyway. You're not just going to have an empty buffer lane. New lanes will fill up with new traffic.

I only go to St Louis because we have family there, so Christmastime with packages and suitcases. God knows, I’d never go there otherwise. I hate it THAT MUCH and I’m always surprised how so very different two cities can be just on other sides of the same state.

I’m sure it Could be done, just not very easily and not without some major stress on my family. So I endure the stress of driving on that death trap highway hoping I can limit the risk by driving fairly conservatively and planning ahead in times I drive and where I stop. I’d personally feel more comfortable with that extra lane to hide away in from semis driving poorly and college kids racing back to Columbia.

You're really selling this ten figure expenditure now, with your once-annual trip that you choose to take by car out of convenience, because the mortal danger of driving on I-70 is still not as stressful as hauling luggage onto Amtrak or shipping things in advance. I'm not clear on where you expect to hide, though. Will it be in the right lane, where most of the trucks will be most of the time? The middle lane, where trucks will still be passing each other? Or the left lane, where you're not supposed to ride and which will in any case remain a magnet for all the racing college kids and other speeders?

[beautyfromashes]

You're really selling this ten figure expenditure now, with your once-annual trip that you choose to take by car out of convenience, because the mortal danger of driving on I-70 is still not as stressful as hauling luggage onto Amtrak or shipping things in advance. I'm not clear on where you expect to hide, though. Will it be in the right lane, where most of the trucks will be most of the time? The middle lane, where trucks will still be passing each other? Or the left lane, where you're not supposed to ride and which will in any case remain a magnet for all the racing college kids and other speeders?

And you're selling me on this dreamtheater that adding additional lanes, or at least an occasional passing lane, is going to magically entice everyone to drive on I70 now, like it's Field of Dreams. They don't know why they want to drive that highway, they just will. I understand that adding highway lanes might affect commuters in a metro. I just don't think this will spur more traffic between KC and STL. Where do those cars go now that they would abandon? It's going to feel safer, so they'll decide to dump their usual Amtrak jaunt? Trucks are going to move onto I70 because, "it's so much safer now, Bob!" I know! CARS BAD. Sorry, I'm not going to buy Amtrak roundtrips for my family and large Ubers to trek through the St. Louis megasuburbs for Christmas and Easter and birthdays for an extra $1000 each time just because the state can't maintain a proper highway system on the gas tax.

[aknowledgeableperson]

This discussion of tolls on I70 is interesting. Missouri doesn't allow roads or highways supported by tolls. It would appear the voters would have to approve an amendment to its constitution to allow tolls.
Yes, the city had a toll bridge on Broadway Bridge and there is a toll bridge in the Lake of the Ozarks region but those are on the bridges only, to help pay for construction and maintenance, not on the roads themselves.

[phuqueue]

You're really selling this ten figure expenditure now, with your once-annual trip that you choose to take by car out of convenience, because the mortal danger of driving on I-70 is still not as stressful as hauling luggage onto Amtrak or shipping things in advance. I'm not clear on where you expect to hide, though. Will it be in the right lane, where most of the trucks will be most of the time? The middle lane, where trucks will still be passing each other? Or the left lane, where you're not supposed to ride and which will in any case remain a magnet for all the racing college kids and other speeders?

And you're selling me on this dreamtheater that adding additional lanes, or at least an occasional passing lane, is going to magically entice everyone to drive on I70 now, like it's Field of Dreams. They don't know why they want to drive that highway, they just will. I understand that adding highway lanes might affect commuters in a metro. I just don't think this will spur more traffic between KC and STL. Where do those cars go now that they would abandon? It's going to feel safer, so they'll decide to dump their usual Amtrak jaunt? Trucks are going to move onto I70 because, "it's so much safer now, Bob!" I know! CARS BAD. Sorry, I'm not going to buy Amtrak roundtrips for my family and large Ubers to trek through the St. Louis megasuburbs for Christmas and Easter and birthdays for an extra $1000 each time just because the state can't maintain a proper highway system on the gas tax.

Don't apologize to me, apologize to your family, whom you are willing to subject to what you claim is lethal danger to save yourself a few bucks and a little extra effort.

If you understand that expanding the highway could affect metro commuters, then you should probably start there as you try to figure out how expanding I-70 could generate more traffic. There are three metros on I-70 (the two largest in the state at either end, and the much smaller but fastest growing right in the middle of them) that could each be induced to sprawl further out along the expanded highway. Even if you struggle to accept that traffic could increase on the rural sections of the highway, it should be within the realm of your existing understanding that those rural sections will be shortened, and that traffic will increase on the now even longer non-rural sections. But since the arguments in favor of expansion are not rooted in reality in the first place (especially not the argument that expansion is somehow a safety improvement), maybe it shouldn't be surprising that the fantasy of an empty buffer lane in Concordia is more important to you than the reality of even more traffic elsewhere on your drive.

[beautyfromashes]

Don't apologize to me, apologize to your family, whom you are willing to subject to what you claim is lethal danger to save yourself a few bucks and a little extra effort.

phuqueue

[aknowledgeableperson]

There is going to be more traffic on the highway no matter if it stays at two lanes or increases to three lanes. It's just a simple fact of our life. Population keeps growing, demand for products keeps growing, families become more spread out. And face it the train from St Louis to KC and back it not for everyone. My current family connections reside on the Illinois side with no transit connection.