Highway T will be reduced to one-lane for nearly two months as the Missouri Department of Transportation begins a $3.38 million improvement project.
Officials say the average traffic for the road this year has been about 4,200 vehicles per day.
The work is slated to begin July 28, with completion expected Sept. 23, according to MoDOT.
The entire length of Highway T — which runs from U.S. Highway 60 east of Poplar Bluff and goes through Wappapello before ending just south of Puxico at an intersection with Highway 51 — will get a new overlay, plus a large section of the highway will have shoulders added to it, officials said.
The road will be reduced to one lane with an 11-foot width restriction during the project, which will run from 6 a.m. to 8 p.m. daily. Pace Construction is the contractor for the project.
“The main thing is the roadway is going to get an asphalt overlay — and the section from Wappapello south to (Highway) 60 is going to get four-foot shoulders added to it,” said Donald Hills, MoDOT’s resident engineer for the Southeast District. “Then it’ll get some rumble strips on (the shoulders), some new striping — and we’re going to be replacing the guard rail across the Wappapello Lake dam.”
Hills has been MoDOT’s resident engineer for the Southeast District for nine years and he said this is the first time during his tenure that Highway T has received this kind of major overhaul. He said conditions on the highway currently are “maybe average or a little less than average.”
“MoDOT (tries) to resurface these roads somewhere around the 10 to 12-year range depending on the level of traffic they have,” Hills said. “This was one that the local regional planning commission had noted that due to the traffic volume on the piece from 60 up to the lake would benefit from the paved shoulders, so they worked through the planning process to get that part of it added in.”
According to Hills, the first order of operation is to do the widening of the shoulders between Highway 60 and Wappapello, then next give the entire stretch of the highway a fresh one-inch asphalt overlay.
With Highway W closed near Hilliard because of a bridge replacement over Black River, options for alternate routes during the construction are limited. Hills said Wappapello residents could use some of the southbound roads between there and Highway 51 as potential alternate routes, but he also pointed out that Highway T is not going to be closed at any time during the project.
“When we’re working on it, we’re just going to close one lane at a time so people will be able to get there,” Hills said. “(Though) they may have to wait 10 minutes or so to get through.”