County Roads to Remain Open Until Late Summer

Access to Bates County Roads 4016 and 3778 to and from Route 71 north of Rich Hill will remain open until late summer as work progresses on a project to build outer roads between Rich Hill and Butler, the Missouri Department of Transportation said.

Also, property owners along the future outer roads will continue to have access to their property during the outer road construction.

However, for several weeks in late summer, County Roads 4016 and 3778 will be closed at their intersections with Route 71. The temporary closings will enable a contractor to build connections between the two county roads and the new outer roads.

During the temporary closings, drivers who use the two county roads to access Route 71 will have to find alternate routes.

These temporary closings were pushed back to late summer from a previously-announced closing this spring.

Specific dates for the late-summer temporary closings will be announced later.

The project

Contractor crews are building an outer road on each side of Route 71 between Rich Hill and Butler as the highway is being upgraded to Interstate 49:

* The west outer road will run between County Road 3778 and the Marais des Cygnes River.

* The east outer road will run between County Road 4016 and Route B at Rich Hill.

Temporary County Road Closings

In late summer, County Road 4016 and County Road 3778 will have to be closed for several weeks at Route 71, and contractor crews will do the work necessary to connect the two county roads to the new outer roads.

Once the outer roads are completed and open to traffic, drivers using County Roads 4016 and 3778 to access Route 71 will have to use an outer road to reach Route 71 at nearby interchanges.

The prime contractor building the outer roads is Lehman Construction of California, MO, doing the work for a low bid amount of $5.4 million.

Completion is scheduled for early November 2012.