The Missouri Transportation department's new austerity plan, named "Missouri's 325 System - Tough Choices Ahead," will concentrate on 8,000 miles of a primary road system, which carries about 75 percent of the state's traffic.
However, with a nearly 34,000-mile road and bridge system that is the nation's seventh largest, that means 26,000 miles have been designated as "supplementary roads."
That includes most of the state-owned roads and bridges throughout Mid-Missouri.
Interstate 70; U.S. highways 50, 54 and 63; and Missouri numbered highways 5, 17, 19, 28, 42 and 52 have been designated as "primary" highways through the region, so there is at least one primary highway in each county, "that connects cities and counties and communities together, that we can commit (and) we can keep in a state of good repair," MoDOT Director Dave Nichols told the Highways and Transportation Commission last week.
"We can't (even) do everything that our customers want on these roads."
The supplementary system includes a number of well-traveled roads MoDOT owns - including Missouri Boulevard and Missouri 179 in Jefferson City, Providence Road and Stadium Drive in Columbia, and all the lettered highways throughout the region, like Route B between Jefferson City and Meta, Route C between Jefferson City and Versailles, or Routes AA and OO in Holts Summit.
"They will function more as local traffic, and they're not going to get the same emphasis as we're putting on the primary roads," Nichols explained. "Our supplementary system is not going to have the capital investment that our primary system is going to have.
"That means we will do limited, routine maintenance ... so, ultimately, our roads will become a "patchwork quilt' of going out and patching roads and doing some pothole repairs. We will still do snow removal, as long as the resources are available to do that.
"But the roads will get rougher and it will be harder to maintain these roads - and they will continue to deteriorate over time."
The issue is, unless MoDOT finds some source of increased funding, it will have only $325 million a year - starting in 2017 - to spend on road and bridges, when it needs at least $485 million each year to maintain the system in its current state.
That means the austerity program the commission approved last week really begins impacting the department's long-range planning in two years - which may cause some confusion.
Projects that already have been approved - including next year's resurfacing of Missouri Boulevard from U.S. 54 to Missouri 179 - will be done because the money already has been budgeted for them.
Also, parts of 179 were resurfaced last year, so - even though they're part of the supplementary system under the new plan - their predicted deterioration likely is further down the road.
However, Nichols cautioned the commissioners, the austerity program also affects a lot of the state's 10,400 bridges.
"We have 483 bridges that are in "poor' condition that need to be replaced today, on the supplementary system," he said. "We will not be able to go and replace these bridges.
"We will do maintenance on these bridges and make repairs that our staff can do to try to keep them open.
"But, ultimately, the weight restrictions on these bridges will continue to go down, which means a lower-weight truck will be able to cross.
"And, ultimately, these bridges will have to be closed."
In Mid-Missouri, 42 bridges - mostly on lettered routes over various creeks - are listed in "critical condition," including the 52-year-old Route A bridge over the Moreau Creek in western Cole County.
But another 79 bridges have load limits, including four in Cole County in addition to the Route A bridge over the Moreau Creek.
Almost half of the region's total - 34 load-limited bridges - are in Boone County.
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