Transportation and Infrastructure

We’d all still be eating fish and chips and drinking warm beer if the lanterns that touched off Paul Revere’s ride had to be hoisted in 21st-century Missouri rather than 18th-century Boston.

That midnight ride would have to start with some clarification: “One if by land? What? You mean rail? Highway? And two if by sea—it includes rivers, right? And what about flight?”

Such are the choices afforded to modern-day motorists, shipper, and logistics professionals who have a wealth of transportation options to choose from when traversing Missouri for leisure, employment, or distribution.

Missouri’s centrality has been well-documented for the economic advantages it bestows upon the state, but what are the pieces of the infrastructure and ecosystem that allow companies to capitalize on that edge?

It starts with multiple interstate highways, which handle the bulk of the freight passing through the state, leaving it or arriving for last-mile distribution. It continues with 4,800 miles of Class I railroad lines crisscrossing the state and—importantly—running north and south. A further dimension is by air, with (cargo shipments through two international airports). And it concludes with water-borne freight as the Missouri River flows from Kansas City to St. Louis, where it feeds into the famed Mississippi.

Those assets, in greater depth:

Interstate Highways. Two of the interstate system’s most important routes run through Missouri. Dubbed the North American Superhighway in the days before NAFTA became the infinitely-less-pronounceable acronym USMCA, Interstate 35 cuts through the northwest corner of the Show-Me state. It ties the Kansas City region directly to cargo flowing between Mexico and Canada. The other is Interstate 70, running from Washington west to western Utah before linking to highways into major west-coast cities.

But the action doesn’t stop there: As I-35 turns northeast to Iowa and on to Minnesota and the Great Lakes, I-29 branches off in Kansas City and makes its way to the Canadian province of Manitoba. A slash of asphalt from southwest Missouri running northeast, Interstate 44 connects St. Louis to Oklahoma and Texas, then resumes southwest. And linking the state to the Gulf of Mexico, Interstate 49 starts in Kansas City and heads south through Arkansas and Louisiana.

With rare exceptions, all offer four-lane, divided-highway connections that reduce travel times and fuel consumption and improve safety for truckers and those in passenger vehicles alike.

Railways. Last fall, a new future for North American rail shipping was unveiled, and Missouri was at the heart of it: Kansas City Southern Railway merged into Canadian Pacific, the second-largest rail company in America’s northern neighbor. The $32 billion deal was hailed as a “transformative” change in the parent’s freight-rail business, creating a nearly 16,000-track-mile network that will function as the first U.S.-Mexico-Canada system. None of the six other Class I railroads crossing the U.S. has an equivalent reach.

Kansas City will retain the U.S. headquarters for the firm, and the Midwest will see a huge amount of cargo that makes its way from the north deep into Mexico and ports to the Gulf and Pacific. Meanwhile, Canadian traffic will cross the continent from Vancouver in British Columbia to St. John’s in the province of Newfoundland.

Companies that benefit from those assets in 2022 can thank generations of pioneers who carved out the trails that became roads and laid the tracks for those railways. Even then, Missouri played a vit-al role in the nation’s westward expansion, especially as the intercontinental railroad system became a thing in 1869. As a result of those visionaries, Kansas City today processes more rail tonnage every year than any other city on the continent and moves more rail cars than any city except Chicago. St. Louis, enjoying many of those same attributes, is the nation’s third-largest rail hub.

Airports. As it prepares to unveil its new single-terminal design, Kansas City eagerly anticipates the benefits of an international airport that could potentially attract more airlines, producing more passenger traffic and more cargo demand. Lambert International in St. Louis gives the state a second international airport. Each has a healthy load of air freight to process; KCI ships nearly 100,000 tons of cargo each year, and St. Louis processes a similar tonnage. In addition to the international airports, Springfield National Airport offers additional options for regional shipments.

Waterway. Even international ocean ports are not out of reach from Missouri, thanks to the longest river in the U.S., the Missouri. It forms the state’s northwest border with Kansas before turning east and heading to St. Louis. For shipping, though, the real action starts as the river approaches Kansas City and links with the Kansas River; there, the additional depth allows for barge traffic bound for the Mississippi. 

And from that point in St. Louis, it’s on to the Gulf of Mexico nearly 1,000 miles downriver. On each end of the Mighty Mo, you’ll find Port KC, the Kansas City port authority, and the St. Louis Port Authority, which help oversee operations that move a wide range of products to markets downriver, including fertilizer, grain, salt, processed steel products, petroleum coke, and more.