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:
“The moments of the past do not remain still; they retain in our memory the motion which drew them towards the future, towards a future which has itself become the past, and draw us on in their train.”
—Marcel Proust (1871–1922)
“It is marvelous indeed to watch on television the rings of Saturn close; and to speculate on what we may yet find at galaxy’s edge. But in the process, we have lost the human element; not to mention the high hope of those quaint days when flight would create “one world.” Instead of one world, we have “star wars,” and a future in which dumb dented human toys will drift mindlessly about the cosmos long after our small planet’s dead.”
—Gore Vidal (b. 1925)
“He had been given to behold
The race’s future trial place,
A fresh start for the human race.”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)