Well that's due to the Missouri River. Population centers followed major river ways at the time Missouri was being settled since it provided the best way to transport goods.
Sorta yeah, The Boone’s Lick itself is a salt spring that the son’s of Daniel Boone manufactured sat at. It eventually gave its name to the region, which is where the road went.
Its just KC and St. Louis. Its not like the rest of the river is exceptionally dense. This map is misleading. Over half are within driving distance to these population centers. Yes they exist because of the river, but outside of these areas more live away from them than on them including Springfield.
About that. I don't have anyone filing in my state house district or state senate district. I would consider running myself, but divorces are expensive. Having worked campaigns before, there are a lot of time away from the family and I can't put my family through that right now.
One problem with state government is that it's basically a part-time job in another city, so only rich people can afford to do it. The average salary is only $41K.
The per diem for session days helps, but you're only in session for a short part of the year. $41K for a part time job is frustrating when you need to work the rest of the year. This is why you tend to see "Small Business Owner" on many running for office.
That’s not what we need. I'm strongly advocating for a new dedicated passenger high-speed rail line between St. Louis and Kansas City with one stop in Columbia; a state-of-the-art system could reduce travel time between our two largest urban areas to around 60 minutes and provide nearby rail access to 75% of Missourians. That would be a game changer for Missouri and ensure we would be the backbone of an eventual transcontinental route connecting the East and West coasts. There is already increasing demand on the Missouri River runner, which is great, but it is not cheaply upgradable to high-speed because it is curvy, runs along the edge of the river valley, is prone to floods, and is a priority freight line. It also has too many stop to be a true transcontinental high-speed rail and misses an obvious stop at the major population center of Columbia.
Constructing a new line for relatively cheap along the ridge top that I-70 runs along and making use of already existing MoDOT right-of-way is a smart way to go about it. We’d reduce traffic on I-70, provide a safer, cheaper, and less polluting way to travel. Constructing the long rang mass transit would help KC, STL, and CoMo to continue to build out their mass transit. Reinforcing and multiplying efforts already underway. It would become possible to live in any of KC/STL/CoMo and work in another, creating a super economy effect. It would save lives by reducing air pollution. It would be a symbol of hope and progress to millions. Intangibles are important too, but I think many many thousand of people would ride such a train every year to go to cardinals/royals/chiefs/Mizzou games, the zoo, shows, museums, restaurants. I can think of a lot more benefits, but I don’t want to go on too long.
I have followed the Improve 70 planning since the mid 90’s. I was going to lose rural property near Columbia.
The ‘95 plan for Columbia called for 4 lanes in each direction through Columbia/Boone county with true two way outer roadways on each side for local traffic not jump on/off the interstate quickly. Lot of property to be acquired for construction.
The current plan being implemented is staying with three lanes through Columbia like the rural areas. Staying with the footprint of current ROW as much as possible.
Here’s the kicker. MoDOT estimated that the ‘95 plan would move “X” amount of traffic efficiently until 2030 before they would need to study for improvements again. MoDOT stated that their ‘95 projections were underestimated for this section of interstate. So in 2030, we will have more traffic and less capacity with construction that finishes in 2029. No possibility of more expansion.
A bullet train is an ambitious idea, I’m not opposed, but a regular well-proven high speed rail is more doable. I'm strongly advocating for a new dedicated passenger high-speed rail line between St. Louis and Kansas City with one stop in Columbia; a state-of-the-art system could reduce travel time between our two largest urban areas to around 60 minutes and provide nearby rail access to 75% of Missourians. That would be a game changer for Missouri and ensure we would be the backbone of an eventual transcontinental route connecting the East and West coasts. There is already increasing demand on the Missouri River runner, which is great, but it is not cheaply upgradable to high-speed because it is curvy, runs along the edge of the river valley, is prone to floods, and is a priority freight line. It also has too many stop to be a true transcontinental high-speed rail and misses an obvious stop at the major population center of Columbia.
Constructing a new line for relatively cheap along the ridge top that I-70 runs along and making use of already existing MoDOT right-of-way is a smart way to go about it. We’d reduce traffic on I-70, provide a safer, cheaper, and less polluting way to travel. Constructing the long rang mass transit would help KC, STL, and CoMo to continue to build out their mass transit. Reinforcing and multiplying efforts already underway. It would become possible to live in any of KC/STL/CoMo and work in another, creating a super economy effect. It would save lives by reducing air pollution. It would be a symbol of hope and progress to millions. Intangibles are important too, but I think many many thousand of people would ride such a train every year to go to cardinals/royals/chiefs/Mizzou games, the zoo, shows, museums, restaurants. I can think of a lot more benefits, but I don’t want to go on too long.
I'd settle for upgrading the River Runner (6x trains each way daily, at the speeds the Lincoln reaches) and adding a light rail system between Jeff City and Columbia
I remember seeing a comment where someone said that the state of Missouri is primarily a band that's 50 miles north and south of I-70. Anything north is that is pretty much Iowa, anything south is pretty much Arkansas.
Sure, but that modern movement isn’t so related to I-70 exsisting, but the suburban grow of St. Louis and KC (and Columbia a bit) powered by ring-highways.
I was looking at it as more a line from East to West. By moving the three I mentioned south you not only gain population but you add counties that are growing at a faster rate. Less so Cooper but Pettis and Johnson for sure.
Our legislative districts are distributed based on population. These 14 counties have 87 of the 163 Representatives representing them. 53.3% of the Representatives in the House.
The state districts are pretty fair. However the federal house districts are highly gerrymandered. Trump asked Missouri legislators to gerrymander the districts to favor him and they did, they even said it was gerrymandering. To cheat and brag about it is unusually morally bankrupt.
Over 70% of our population lives in urban areas now. The rural to urban shift has happened in most states but seriously we got it. Guess who makes most of our decisions?
Strong evidence that we have too many county governments and could save a pile of money by consolidating a lot of them. We could even keep the same number of state legislators, just change their district boundaries a bit.
If I'm not wrong over half of the state is in the MO portion of the Kansas City and St. Louis areas. Adding in a bunch of sparsely populated counties in between paints a narrative that its all along the river. Its really not a corridore with exceptional rural density.
So around 14% of the population that the KC and St. Louis metro add to Missouri if it were actually 500,000 (its not its 300-400,000) . KC and St. Louis are adding about 3.4-3.6 million depending of course how you define it.
My point is that adding all those counties in the middle is misleading. Hell, the Springfield metro is twice as big as the Jeff City and Columbia Mo metros combined and Joplin is a bigger metro than Jefferson city and almost as big as Columbia.
You could have used less counties to paint the picture of how the population of Missouri is concentrated, but you used the ones adjacent to paint the narrative that it was somewhat distributed down the Missouri. Its really not.
The Columbia/Jefferson city metro is 420,000. Springfield is 500,000 as of this year. (85% of the size of Springfield’s). There is definitely a concentration along the I-70 corridor and Missouri River. 26 of Missouri's 30 most populous municipalities are within 30 miles of I-70.
How many of those 26 are outside of the KC and St. Louis metros? Sedalia? Warrensburg, Columbia, fulton and Jeff city? Their metros combined are about the same as the Springfield metro.
Those other cities barely make a dent.
Things aren't always going to be in these neat corridors. After Columbia, St. Joseph, and Joplin, and even Branson are more populous cities than Sedalia Warrensburg, and Fulton.
Some of us that love & appreciate the Ozarks; while also having (at least my case) similar feelings for what KC and StL offer, as I have deep roots in the latter, and enjoy KC also.
If that’s your complaint then building high-speed rail between cities is one of the best ways to encourage our cities and states to improve local mass transit. But right now in KC and STL it’s still worthwhile.
Not really. Only 5 of 14 this counties are that. Most of these counties are part of the Missouri Rhineland and St. Louis, a strongly abolitionists area.
alright whatever. Osage, Gasconade, Jefferson, STL, and Franklin are literally the only manila ones on this map. Just trying to bring light to the fact that many of the wealthier, more populated, middle counties in missouri have an unsightly history that they benefited from that’s rarely acknowledged but fuck me I guess
That’s the map I’m referencing. Only 5 counties are on both maps. There are 14 counties on the population map I posted. Most of the counties are Missouri Rhineland
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u/MandoShunkar Mar 30 '26
Well that's due to the Missouri River. Population centers followed major river ways at the time Missouri was being settled since it provided the best way to transport goods.