Safety improvements planned for Jefferson City intersection

Major changes are coming designed to improve safety at one Jefferson City intersection.

Wednesday, MoDOT held a public informational meeting on the changes coming to the Route 50/63 and Shamrock/Liberty Lane intersection.

The $430,000 project is set to start Summer 2017 and is expected to last two to three months.

There have been 47 crashes at the intersection over the past 10 years, according to MoDOT.

“I’ve seen several accidents here,” Norbert Bax, who lives near the intersection, said. “So yeah, something does need to be done, no doubt about that.”

The project will include adding right turn lanes onto the highway to give drivers time to get up to speed and a new eastbound left turn lane onto Shamrock Road. The entrance to Liberty Lane off the highway will also be moved 200-300 feet to the east, eliminating the median crossovers.

MoDOT Transportation Project Manager Bruce Green said he expected the changes to reduce the amount of crashes at the intersection.

“With the improvements that we’d like to make out here, we think that’ll more than half those or cut them drastically,” Green said.

The work is not expected to come with any major traffic delays, according to Green.

“There’s a lot of commuters that come through this stretch in the morning and evening so we’ll probably not allow work like in the eastbound lanes or westbound lanes at those times,” Green said. “But for the most part, we’ll try to minimize the inconvenience as much as possible.”

The changes are part of a bigger project to resurface Route 50/63 from the Moreau River Bridge to the Osage River Bridge. That work is also set to start next summer.