Interstate 49 - Future

Future

Long-term plans call for I-49 to be extended southeastward from Lafayette to New Orleans and northward from Shreveport to Kansas City, Missouri where it will connect with other interstates and provide a seamless freeway link from Louisiana ports to the Canadian border in North Dakota via Interstate 29 and to other points north via Interstate 35.

Construction for the extension north is already underway in southwest Missouri, northern and southwestern Arkansas, and in northern Louisiana.

A 180-mile stretch of U.S. 71 from south Kansas City to Joplin will officially become Interstate 49 on Dec. 12, 2012.

U.S. 71 is already a divided highway with a 70 mph speed limit, but the change to an interstate meant eliminating all intersections and cross roads along the route. The Missouri Department of Transportation has awarded $63.3 million since 2009 to remove the crossings and replace them with four overpasses, nine interchanges and three outer roads.

Read more about this topic:  Interstate 49

Famous quotes containing the word future:

    I am not naturally ... “A bag of wind”; yet ... I mean deliberately and decidedly “to cut” in future all my old ideas on this head. I don’t think modesty “pays.” It is a good quality in a family, it is a domestic virtue, it makes a home happy after you have got a home, but it is not potent in getting homes. It is not a money-maker, neither is it lucky in gaining a reputation. I am of the impression that gaseous bodies do better.
    Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)

    If nations always moved from one set of furnished rooms to another—and always into a better set—things might be easier, but the trouble is that there is no one to prepare the new rooms. The future is worse than the ocean—there is nothing there. It will be what men and circumstances make it.
    Alexander Herzen (1812–1870)

    The power we exert over the future behavior of our children is enormous. Even after they have left home, even after we have left the world, there will always be part of us that will remain with them forever.
    Neil Kurshan (20th century)