Western commissioner Roger Fischer knows creating a better route between Callaway County and Boone County won't happen right away.
"I think now is a good time to start thinking ahead," he said during a Monday morning meeting. "Maybe decades ahead."
The county commissioners, along with Mayor LeRoy Benton and representatives from Callaway Electric Cooperative, the Missouri Department of Transportation and Mertens Construction, gathered at the courthouse to hear Fischer propose the plan.
Here's the issue, as explained by Fischer. Route F and Route WW around Millersburg are overloaded with commuters, farming equipment, weekend bikers and large trucks. Options for accessing the Ashland area, which Fischer said is predicted to continue growth and development, are limited.
Fischer believes the county should start looking into addressing those issues.
"This is a result of conversations that have been going on for eight to 10 years," he said. "We're really starting to get some safety issues out on Route F and WW."
One option could be widening and straightening F and WW, he said, but that would mean getting easements through thousands of small properties. Or, the county could create a new road using portions of existing county roads.
Options include:
Paving and extending County Road 346 to E. Barnes Chapel Road/Highway AB, which terminates at U.S. 63.
Paving and extending County Roads 315 through 326 to 353, then extending 353 across to E. Englewood Road.
Creating a straight road between U.S. 54 and County Road 338, then improving and straightening Route Y.
Doug Mertens of Mertens Construction and Mid-Missouri Limestone attended the meeting and sees the need for better access westward.
"You look at WW and Y, that's a large void that Columbia and Ashland are racing to fill," he said.
Trucks from his quarry bring loads to an industrial site in development near Ashland.
"We have to take a giant U to get to Ashland," Mertens said.
He said this project could be a private-public partnership, as many private entities could benefit from better access between Boone and Callaway County. That might include the Columbia Regional Airport, Benton said.
Funding would be a major barrier, meeting attendees said. Paul Winkelmann, head of Callaway's road and bridge department, said converting a gravel road to blacktop costs about $400,000 per mile.
"The county just can't afford it," Fischer agreed.
And Mike Schupp, area engineer with MoDOT for Callaway County and several others, said MoDOT was unlikely to offer financial support for the project. He said MoDOT was more likely to preserve and improve existing roads than create new ones - as MoDOT did several years ago when it expanded shoulders and added rumble strips along Routes WW, J and F.
"Bear in mind, we've had the same funding package at the state level for the last 25 years, with no change in sight," Schupp said.
Fischer and Mertens floated the possibility of introducing a half-cent tax to fund the project.
"If you did a ten-year (tax) to build a road between point A and point B, you could generate roughly $15 million," Presiding Commissioner Gary Jungermann said.
All of this is far in the future. As Schupp pointed out, just the Environmental Protection Agency process that needs to be completed before building a new road takes seven to 10 years.
However, Fischer said now is the time to get the ball rolling.
"I personally think it'd be in our best interest to go to work on this before there's a terrible accident (near Millersburg," Fischer said.