Four years after the initial announcement and multiple hold ups later, the county commissioners have nixed the U.S. Highway 61 Outer Road project for now.

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MoDofs funding was capped at 52 million, so anything additional on that project was the county,’’ said

Jeff Niemever, MoDOT area engineer, ‘The county could not come up with their share of the funds. If the county is ever able to raise money and comes back to MoDOT, we will be interested in having possible conversations about the project,’’ With no guarantee and only hope it will ever see the light of day again, it seems the project was plagued from the start — there were delays, dissatisfaction, and a dead end, Originally, the plan was for a new U.S. Highway 61 Outer Road to connect Troy and Moscow Mills, located on the west side of the highway between South Lincoln Drive and Route C.

The project estimate was nearsee accept the roundabout as it was built,7′

ly S4 million, funded with the Missouri Department of Transportation (MoDOT) 50/50 Match Grant with Lincoln County sharing 50% of the project cost. The county also received a low interest loan from the state for their S2 million match. Commissioner Joe Kaimann confirmed to the Lincoln County Journal that the commissioners opted not to pursue the project last week under the MoDOT cost share agreement due to inflation which made die county’s portion of the cost share agreement rise to $2,95 million. “We’re going to look at other options to try and get it done.“ Kaimann said. “I don’t know what that looks like — if it looks like the same path or if it is going back to MoDOT and asking for more money on a different cost share agreement or a combination between landowners and cities. We knew that this cost share agreement was too expensive for us anymore.” Construction was projected to begin during the summer of 2022 but when that never happened, frustration

started mounting. The largest and most debatable obstacle was a roundabout constructed on private property that didn’t meet MoDOT specifications but would connect to die outer road. However, nearly six months ago, the project finally sounded like it might be progressing. “We re farther along in the project, I think we re cooperating better. I think all parties involved are doing everything in our pow er to try to get this project moving which is huge,” said Lincoln County Highway Supervisor Eric Tapley at the time. “We’re just trying to get final approval on some last litde tidbits of engineering, get some right away documents done so we can approach some lien owners to get the right away acquired and then we’d be ready to go to bid.” Developer Dale Black built the controversial four-leg roundabout to connect to a residential development. MoDOT Assistant Area Engineer Kevin James previously said since the roundabout was built on private property widi private dollars, it didn’t re-quire

MoDOT s approval. But with it connecting to the outer road, it would need to meet certain specifications, noting “we don’t want something that’s part of the outer road system that doesn’t work well.” As far as whether the situation with the roundabout resolved itself. Black says “that was the hurdle.” “Based on my latest conversation with the Commissioners, it is my understanding that MoDot would not

he said. Despite the project not moving forward, Black acknowledges “the extraordinary efforts” that multiple parties have invested and worked on throughout the project. “It appeared that all the private landowners were providing the necessary cooperation and I commend them for that,” Black said. “In spite of all that we w ere unable to get over the hurdles presented by MoDot. It is my hope that in the future diey will re-examine their positions in order to serve our community and its citizens better.”