While states across the U.S. are debating how to finance backlogs of bridge and highway repairs, Missouri is moving forward with a novel plan to fix or replace more than 800 of the state's bridges within five years.

Missouri's plan has a team of contractors financing the $400 million to $600 million in repairs and maintaining the bridges for the next quarter century.

In turn, the Show-Me State will use some of its federal bridge funds to pay back the companies over the 25-year period.

Already in the works before the huge Minnesota bridge collapse in August that focused new attention on bridges nationwide, the Missouri plan is being touted as a model for other states.

"With this innovative new approach to transportation, we will do in five years what would have taken us 20 years before," said Missouri state Rep. Neal St. Onge. "We are getting maximum value for taxpayers and keeping the public safe as well."

In addition to getting a lot of bridges fixed in a short time, Missouri's approach has a short-term political benefit. Lawmakers don't have to sell the public on the need for higher gasoline taxes or new tolls - proposals that have stopped transportation funding packages in other places, including Minnesota and Pennsylvania.

Missouri's plan also appealed to contractors who could recoup as much as twice their construction costs as the state repays the companies over the 25 years. The state essentially will pay back a loan for the building costs, profit and interest that the winning bidder has included in the proposal, said Jeff Briggs, a spokesman for the Missouri Department of Transportation.

The nation's bridges have been under intense scrutiny since a 458-foot span over the Mississippi River collapsed in downtown Minneapolis on Aug. 1, killing more than a dozen motorists and sending politicians into frenzy. The 40-year-old bridge was just one of more than 73,000 across the country in need of significant structural repair, according to the Federal Highway Administration.

The nation's governors immediately ordered inspections of their states' bridges and decried the lack of money to fix their crumbling infrastructure.

Congress also reacted quickly, approving $250 million in emergency funds to help replace the Minnesota bridge, one of the state's most heavily traveled.

Missouri has accepted bids from two teams of construction firms, which will pay to repair or replace nearly 80 percent of bridges in the state that are in poor condition. The private firms also will be required to keep those bridges in good shape for 25 years after the repairs.

But the plan has its limitations. Besides the large payout, the program is targeting only smaller, rural bridges - from 100 feet to 300 feet long. None of Missouri's 11 steel-deck truss bridges, which resemble the Minneapolis span, is slated to be repaired under the plan, said Briggs of MoDOT.

In addition, few companies could commit to completing such a statewide project. Two of the four original teams to bid on Missouri's plan dropped out because they could not meet the program's requirements.

Despite those issues, there was little opposition to the plan in a late summer special legislative session, where lawmakers passed a bill to change Missouris bonding requirements to make way for the bridge projects.

But in Minnesota, a recent special legislative session ended without a hoped-for package of road and bridge funding. While federal funds are expected to cover the cost of replacing the Minneapolis bridge, the state will have to pay for the costs upfront to be reimbursed. Without an infusion of new money, some worry the state may have to sideline other projects to begin rebuilding the Minneapolis bridge.