Missouri Route 364 - History

History

The East-West Gateway Council of Governments determined there was a need for the freeway in 1969. However, little progress was made until the commissioning of the Page Avenue Bridge Committee in the fall of 1984. An earlier alignment, called the Green Line, bypassed Creve Coeur Lake Memorial Park and took the freeway to Interstate 70, but it could no longer be considered due to the rapid growth of the city of St. Peters and because the park expanded in size and encroached on the proposed alignment anyway. The committee proposed a new alignment called the Red Line and the Missouri Department of Transportation (MoDOT) authorized the project in the fall of 1986. In the spring of 1987 Missouri voters approved a fuel tax increase which included funding for the project. MoDOT held numerous meetings since then, but the alignment was not approved until June 1990. The United States Congress passed legislation in October 1992 authorizing the project as part of the Pipeline Safety Act of 1992. The environmental impact study was completed in November 1992, but just before the project was to received final clearance from the federal government Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt took office and ordered more environmental studies resulting in more land mitigation for intrusion into Creve Coeur Lake Memorial Park. In the fall of 1995 the federal government gave the final clearance for the project 11 years after active planning began. For nearly 27 years the roadway was simply referred to as the Page Avenue Extension, but in February 1996 MoDOT gave the freeway an official designation of MO-364. Construction on the freeway is divided into 3 separate phases and began with the first project in 1997.