Governor Nixon and Missouri Transportation Funding: The Time Is Now - The Missourian: Editorials

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Nixon isn’t bluffing on sounding the alarm for a new transportation investment. The need is real and growing. Missouri has the seventh-largest highway system in the nation but ranks 46th in how much we invest to maintain it. We’ve neglected the issue for too long. The day of reckoning is upon us. . . .

Our state’s gas tax of 17 percent a gallon has remained the same since 1996 — almost 20 years. 

Inflation has eroded the purchasing power of those taxes by more than 50 percent. Adjusted for inflation, that 17 cents buys about 8 cents of concrete today and decreases each year. . . .

MoDOT’s plan is to use the revenue it has to focus on taking care of the state’s primary roads which connect cities across the state. The primary roads account for about 8,000 miles of the state’s total.

While the state would provide limited maintenance on the remaining 26,000 miles of roadways, the burden of keeping those up would shift to counties and cities.

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Governor Nixon and Missouri Transportation Funding: The Time Is Now - The Missourian: Editorials

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MoBikeFed comment: This issue is an important one for those of us who bicycle and walk. The 26,000 miles of the system that will receive extremely limited maintenance under the Missouri 325 are exactly that miles that people who bicycle and walk depend on the most.

The 8,000 miles are mostly interstate freeways and other high-traffic roads where relatively little bicycling and walking happens. But the remaining 26,000 miles cut through every Missouri city and county, and provide the backbone of the transportation system that people who bicycle and walk depend on every day.