I get more calls on these (roads) than I do on Highway 50.”

MoDOT’s Preston Kramer

HERMANN — Gasconade County officials last week were told not to expect substantial repairs to Route F in north county before additional traffic is pushed onto it from another nearby state highway next summer during the replacement of a 1930s-era one-lane bridge.

Route F already has been patched multiple times because of damage being done by dump trucks loaded with clay and rock from a clay-mining operation at a site on Benson Road.

Northern District Associate Commissioner Jim Holland, R-Hermann, Thursday morning asked Missouri Department of Transportation District Engineer Preston Kramer about the transit agency’s plans for improving Route F, which runs from Route J to Highway 19 at Swiss. Routes F and J received a chip-and-seal coat two years ago. Since then, both secondary state highways have received damage from the increased heavy-truck traffic in and out of the quarry. The roads also receive an amount of damage from trash-collection trucks.

“I get more calls on these (roads) than I do on Highway 50,” Kramer said, via a telephone conversation with the County Commission during the annual meeting held to develop the latest list of priority state road-and-bridge projects for Gasconade County.

Kramer, the top MoDOT engineer for the eight counties within the Meramec Region, said he’s aware of the damage being done to J and F. “F and J were never meant handle that (type of) traffic. The big trucks are tearing it apart faster than we can patch it,” he said.

“We’re going to continue to monitor F and J,” Kramer added.

As for a substantial upgrade to Route F in anticipation of additional traffic being pushed onto the highway with the upcoming construction of a new bridge over First Creek on Route J, Kramer said that isn’t likely, noting that MoDOT can’t spend an inordinate amount of its maintenance funds on just one highway.

However, he said, any substantial improvement probably will be done in-house.

“The likelihood  of us doing it through a contractor is highly unlikely,” he said, pointing out that transit work has been curtailed through a loss of funds resulting from a drop in fuel sale — a consequence of the coronavirus pandemic.

Kramer said the First Creek bridge project will be included in the November bid letting and probably awarded to a contractor in December. The project is scheduled to begin in late spring and last about three months. The new bridge will go in exactly where the existing one-lane span sits, he said, making the closing of Route J necessary.

Area residents who travel J to Highway 100 into Hermann will have to exit off of J onto F and then travel to Swiss and take Highway 19 north into Hermann or take F to Zastrow Road, backtracking to First Creek Road which connects to Route  J at First Creek.

How the bridge project will affect the route of the school bus that transports students in the area is unclear.