Carol Croft: Has MoDOT considered the use of carpool lanes for all the major highways? I have been to many other cities that use these and it incents people to carpool and reduce the number of cars on the road. With the addition of an extra lane on all the major highways, it seems like a good idea to use one as a carpool only lane during high peak traffic times.

Dan Galvin and Linda Wilson: MoDOT has considered carpool lanes and has examined the research about them. Successful High-Occupancy Vehicle (HOV) lanes are always an additional lane and not the restriping of an existing lane, have their own ramp system at major interchanges so cars don't have to merge out of the HOV lane to exit to another interstate and there are laws in place to enforce the HOV lanes. Except for five of the 10 miles of the I-64 project, MoDOT does not have any plans to add more lanes on our interstates including I-70, I-44, I-55 or I-270. We also don't have any legislation in the state of Missouri to enforce HOV lanes if we could ever build them. At this point, we are not planning to do HOV lanes. In other cities where existing lanes were restriping for HOV, they have been very unsuccessful and the striping was taken back.

MoDOT does strongly support carpooling and we support the regional carpooling service of RideFinders. Its carpool network has grown dramatically in the past year with I-64 and the price of gas. Less cars on the road is better for all of us.

Linda Wilson

JZ: Is the McKnight bridge still scheduled to open Friday. Also, what is goihg on at Clayton-Warson? When will girder setting start there? Also, since Spoede is scheduled to close Monday, will it be demolished Monday also? When will griders be set on the south to west ramp and deck panels on the east to north ramp at 170 Finally, when will paving on the west side start.

Dan Galvin and Linda Wilson: As of right now it is. Girders are scheduled to be set over the Warson Road end of the bridge on the night of June 2. We plan to start demo of Spoede and McCutcheon on Monday, June 2 as well. Mainline paving is scheduled for mid-June.

Dan

chris jones: Hello,

I am wondering about the mainline paving. Will you pave the first pass at 24' wide and a second pass at 24' wide to give you the 4 through lanes in 1 direction? Where are you going to start and approximately when?

It appears Kingshighway could be done earlier than Sept. If it is, will you begin work earlier on Hampton?

Thank you very much for taking time to do this each week.

Dan Galvin and Linda Wilson: Mainline paving is scheduled to begin in mid-June. Details of exactly where and how are still being worked out. The first step is to construct the concrete plant. If you go to the project website and pull up the I-170 webcam on the Magna building you can see the concrete plant site construction beginning between the south to west and east to north ramps.

Work on the Hampton Avenue bridge won't begin until after the Forest Park Balloon Glow over the weekend of September 19-20, so even if Kingshighway is finished in August we won't start on Hampton until after that.

Dan