ST. CHARLES COUNTY, Mo. — The St. Charles County I-70, I-64 interchange is at the top of the Missouri Department of Transportation's unfunded needs list.
"It has become horrendous in the afternoon," said Edward Spellerberg, who lives in the area.
"It's been a mess, and it's getting more and more every year," said longtime driver Tom Kalemme.
MoDOT said I-70 serves up to 90,000 drivers a day. Engineers predict even more traffic as St. Charles County continues to grow.
"We see significant backups on a daily basis," MoDOT St. Louis Regional District Engineer Tom Blair. "Usually beginning around 3:00 p.m., lasting about three hours on average."
Blair opened Wentzville City Hall Monday to display MoDOT's proposed project to the public.
"We asked about the merging from 64 onto 70 going west, because that's where a big bottleneck is," Spellerberg said.
The first priority is to add new ramps and traffic lanes on 64 at 70.
"Those orange ramps that get you from I-64 onto I-70 or vice versa, they all have two lanes. We don't have ramps today at this location that have two traffic lanes," Blair said of the color-coded map.
New thru lanes in the center of the interchange will eliminate the left-hand exits on I-64 and US 61. The green ramps will have one lane. New lanes and ramps will be added to I-70 westbound alleviating traffic to Route Z and Church Street.
"The price tag on this concept right now in today's dollars is around $122 million, we have $77 million of state and federal transportation dollars that we have committed to this project," Blair said.
The construction is estimated to take about 2 years from 2025 to 2027. Blair said it would be done in phases if need be.
"You're going to see a safer, and more efficient interchange of I-70 and I-64 in St. Charles County," Blair said.
"They definitely need to improve it and it looks like they're going the right way," Kalemme said.
MoDOT said they're still about a year away from making a final decision on the plan.
Once completed, Blair said the new design would hold the traffic capacity for at least 25 years.