Jeffrey Knight, a 49-year-old trucker from Muscle Shoals, Ala., flew back to Alabama on Wednesday while police in St. Louis County continue to investigate the crash he caused on Highway 40 Tuesday afternoon. Two people died and 16 were injured when Knight’s big rig barrelled into a line of stop-and-go traffic on eastbound Highway 40, just west of Interstate 270.
 
The Missouri Highway Patrol says Knight was inattentive. (You can read our report from today’s Post-Dispatch here.)  Investigators won’t be more specific yet. They say their full report will be turned over soon to county prosecutors.
 
There’s plenty of dangers out…

Post-Dispatch transportation writer Elisa Crouch is breaking the news that Missouri and Illinois leaders have reached an agreement on a new Mississippi River bridge.

Her early story says:

It has been more than two years since Congress authorized $239 million for a new bridge, which would redirect Interstate 70 traffic from the congested Poplar Street Bridge. Officials from both sides of the river, however, struggled to agree on the scale, cost and financing of the project.

One stumbling block was overcome last spring, when Missouri officials dropped their insistence on tolls as a way to finance the bridge. Illinois was…