Gone are the days when Missouri Highways and Transportation Department officials told people what road improvements they would get.

Under a new program, Missourians will tell officials what roads should be improved. Then department officials will look at ways to fix them.

Cape Girardeau County is the testing ground for the new method, being used to study Routes 25, 34 and 72. Thursday night department engineers met with local elected officials at the Holiday Inn to explain how the experiment is going.

Months ago the Cape Girardeau County Commission and various city leaders appointed a technical focus group to look at traffic congestion on Routes 25, 34 and 72. The appointees worked with Environmental Science & Engineering Inc., a St. Louis firm under contract with the department.

The focus group did traffic studies, determined roadway deficiencies, and predicted growth areas in the county.

A full report on the findings will be available in about a month, but group members determined that area population grows 1.15 percent annually. Residential growth is concentrated to the north and west of Cape Girardeau and to the north of Jackson.

If the trend continues, people in those areas will need roads to get them into Cape Girardeau. That city already is a common destination for people all over the county.

The group also determined that most traffic accidents are on Highway 61 between Interstate 55 and the Jackson city limits, on Routes 34 and 72 near their separation point and on any Interstate 55 interchange.

ESE engineers plan to start thinking about where new highway corridors may go to get traffic safely from one place to another. They will start with numerous areas and wide corridors, narrowing them down as they get more information about the choices.

Eventually they will have new routes plotted through the county. This is where the public must help, said Scott Meyer, the department's District 10 engineer. With input about effects on businesses, schools and traffic flow in general, engineers will best be able to determine where new roads should be.

Highway officials haven't set any priorities on improving or moving any of the three routes. Meyer indicated elected officials will have a say on who serves on local committees studying the projects. Eventually, open public hearings will be conducted.

The elected officials in attendance Thursday seemed pleased with the process.

"It appears they have a grasp on what the needs are," County Commissioner Joe Gambill said. "I think it will be better when we see the narrative instead of all these maps."