In 2026, Missouri is due for an update to its Long-Range Transportation Plan and its State Freight and Rail Plan. The new plans will be the first implemented since 2018 and guide Missouri’s transportation network through 2050.
Though updates typically happen every five years with the exception of a short pause during the pandemic, updates to these plans are significant because they ensure Missouri meets guidelines for state and federal transportation grants.
Equally important is their reflection of emerging trends and constantly changing transportation needs of Missourians who use the state’s highways, sidewalks and local public transit systems day-to-day.
But Missourians today have less of a say in their everyday transportation needs, and that’s been reflected in recent state legislative action. When Gov. Mike Kehoe signed the state operating and capital improvement budget bills for fiscal year 2026, he reduced the state’s Transit Operating Investment from $11.7 million to $6.7 million.
Between 2019 and 2023, the Missouri Public Transit Association’s 32 member agencies collectively provided an average of 40.1 million rides per year, totaling some $1.4 billion in annual direct economic impact, according to a Saint Louis University analysis.
But since the statewide cuts this fiscal year, public transit agencies, especially rural ones, have felt the impact. OATS Transit, a rural transportation agency that serves 87 counties in Missouri, lost $900,000 in state funding in 2025. Since agencies use state transportation funding to match federal funding, that translates to a total loss of $1.8 million.
Jackson Hotaling is the director of policy and programs at Missourians for Responsible Transportation, a nonprofit organization that works with Missouri communities to promote local transportation options that are safe, affordable and accessible.
“It’s pretty incredible what cuts can do,” Hotaling said. “Not only are you cutting from the state budget a certain amount of money from a state agency, but often there are much larger matches that they're trying to use that state money to attain more federal funding. So you’re at an order of magnitude impacting any rural transit agency.”
Hotaling serves on the executive committee advising the Missouri Department of Transportation on updates to the Long-Range Transportation Plan. The committee has representatives of transportation industries including aviation, highways and trucking, and waterways. It includes Hotaling as a representative for pedestrian and bicycle infrastructure.
Missouri is one of only four states nationwide without an active transportation plan — that is, one accounting for people using non-motorized modes of transportation to get to home, school or work — included in its long-range plan. Hotaling advocates for that as Missouri recorded a record number of pedestrian fatalities, not including bicylists, in 2025. The state has the nation’s seventh-largest highway system, with nearly 34,000 miles of highways, including more miles of state highways than Iowa, Kansas and Nebraska combined.
Hotaling said each of the state transportation department's seven districts see road and bridge funding as fundamental to building a transportation system that moves both people and goods while generating revenue and jobs. Missouri's ongoing Improve I-70 project received $2.8 billion from the state's $5 billion general revenue surplus in fiscal year 2024. But as billions are made available for such massive interstate expansions, less wiggle room emerges for public transit systems or active transportation infrastructure.
As a result, Missourians unable to afford cars could have less opportunity for transportation access in the updated plan. Even those who rely on Missouri’s highways face the consequences. Anthony Conway, who founded the Columbia-based car donation program Cars 4 Missouri in the early 2000s, said in an October interview with Vox Magazine that “the only real solution to a transportation issue in any community is a personal vehicle.”
If the state government makes a change to transportation funding, local public transit systems consolidate, but organizations like Conway’s also get less grant money, putting more people in need of a way to get from point A to point B.
The Long-Range Transportation Plan’s public comment period opens Jan. 14 and runs through Feb. 13. But whether the plan in its final form can accurately reflect the broader needs of Missourians hinges on what transportation initiatives can be supplemented locally.
This story was originally published by Missouri Business Alert, a fellow member of the KC Media Collective.
