JEFFERSON CITY • Missouri lawmakers on Tuesday got the clearest glimpse yet of what Interstate 70 would look like as a toll road — possibly within eight years.

Missouri Department of Transportation Director Kevin Keith told a legislative panel that the actual toll amounts are up in the air but would likely be in the neighborhood of 10 to 15 cents a mile for cars.

Truckers would pay two to three times that amount.

Tolls would likely be collected electronically at highway speeds — through an "open-road toll" system — rather than at booths, Keith said.

Keith said tolls would generate the necessary revenue to rebuild the mostly rural stretch of highway between the Highway 40-61 interchange near Wentzville and the Interstate 470 interchange near Kansas City.

It would be rebuilt under a public-private partnership. There are three leading visions for what form it should take. They include:

• Replacing the pavement only, adding a third lane in each direction and dividing the highway with a concrete median. The cost would be $2 billion.

• Replacing the pavement, adding a third lane in each direction and replacing all of the interchanges. It would have a 100- to 150-foot wide median for future expansion or other transportation uses. It would cost $3 billion.

• Rebuilding the highway with four lanes in each direction. Two of the lanes would be dedicated to large trucks only and the other two separated lanes would be for cars. The cost would be $4 billion.

The project would create 6,000 to 12,000 jobs a year over the six to eight years it would take to rebuild the highway, Keith said. The average wage would be $34,000 a year.

Missouri has a rare window of opportunity to proceed on an I-70 rebuild, Keith said. The U.S. Department of Transportation has granted Missouri authority to convert I-70 into a toll road. Two other states have been granted similar authority, he said.

Interstate 70 is approaching its 60th year, Keith said, even though it was designed to last only 25. While it has served Missouri and the country well, MoDOT now spends $75 million to $90 million a year on its upkeep.

"The pavement is worn out," Keith said. "It's congested. It works pretty good as long as you don't have an accident and we don't try to work on it. If either of those two things happen, you have traffic backed up for 10 miles."

There is no formal proposal on the table, Keith said.

No legislation had been introduced before Tuesday's hearing of the Joint Committee on Transportation Oversight. The panel is scheduled to take up the issue again today.

The state will have to move "unreasonably fast," Keith said. "Could you imagine if we tried to rebuild I-70 five years at a time and were working on it for the next 25 years? What a disaster that would be."

The proposal drew immediate fire from members of the trucking industry.

"It's an industry of small business," said Todd Spencer, executive vice president of the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association.

"Whether you're talking about tolling Interstate 70 or tolling any road, you are talking about adding crippling costs."