Thursday, September 4, 2008

MoDOT Readies Roads for Tour of Missouri

JEFFERSON CITY – When 120 of the world’s greatest bicyclists spin their way through Missouri Sept. 8-14 for the Tour of Missouri bicycle race, the Missouri Department of Transportation will be working behind the scenes to make sure the way is safe for cyclists, motorists and spectators.

MoDOT has been working with event organizers to map the race routes and develop traffic management plans to minimize the impact on the traveling public. Now that the route is set, MoDOT’s focus is to share information with the public about road closings during the race.

“We’ve worked hard to contribute to making this a successful event for the state of Missouri,” said MoDOT Director Pete Rahn. “As the race goes along, safety for the traveling public and for the cyclists is our major concern.”

MoDOT will also work closely with the Missouri State Highway Patrol throughout the race to secure the routes, Rahn said. Most of the affected roads will be closed a few minutes ahead of the racers and will be opened back up as soon as they pass through, keeping road closings to about 20-30 minutes.

More information about the race, including maps of the race routes, can be found on MoDOT’s Web site, www.modot.org/tourofmissouri, and at www.tourofmissouri.com.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

In the future, before the Tour of Missouri Bike Race, all roads should be gone over and checked for roughness, deterioration, bumpiness, etc., then 'fixed' as much as possible. Many of the roads on the 2008 course south of St. Joe are in very rough condition. I'm a native KCian living in Buchanan Co. and would like to keep the race here in the future. The Joe-KC leg is very scenic. However, Hwy/route M and other ajoining Hwy/routes in that area are bad for bicyling Traffic! Hwy116 is ok. Thanks. Lifelong-Missourian.

Anonymous said...

I live in Platte County and they are resurfacing hwy 273. This has to be the poorest messed up job that I have ever seen in my life. Where they add on to an already finished portion they are leaving large holes and you have to try and miss them when your driving.
Also it is such rough a ride now that it really isnt much of an inprovement over what was already there. Its a waste of my tax
money. Dont they have supervisors that check their work? It would be nice if somone would check into this matter.
Thanks a Weston resident