Building a four-lane road through a developed city takes optimism. It also takes lots and lots of somebody’s money, but we can wait and talk about that five years from now when the spending will be just getting warmed up. And probably again 10 years from now. Possibly 15.

The Southeast Connector is one of those ideas that look clean and simple on paper but get quite a bit more complicated when you’re out driving around. This applies to most development ideas, of course, but particularly when you’re dealing with details like a good-sized river, occupied homes, railroad tracks, gravel pits filled with water and large manufacturing plants.

All you need to design a road through a cornfield is a pencil, a ruler and the power of eminent domain. The Southeast Connector is going to require quick planning – before other people’s projects get in the way — world-class cost estimating and people willing to face a few years of public meetings. Ah, public meetings, the perfect setting for powerless citizens to lecture, enlighten and generally yell at authority figures.

The project will link Martin Luther King Jr. Parkway with Southeast 14th Street and the U.S. Highway 65 bypass at Pleasant Hill, and at the same time create easy access to the surprisingly wide-open Southeast Side.

Though developers to the west of Des Moines have been pouring concrete like beer for the past 20 years, here’s an expanse of land a couple of miles from downtown that’s just sitting there, taking it easy. Which would be fine, except that cities do enjoy collecting taxes on improved property.

But first, we face the problem that was foreordained when somebody built a cabin at the confluence of the Des Moines and Raccoon rivers. With two shiny new bridges at the southwest corner of downtown, now we’re looking at another one.

You can drive from Principal Park to the unassuming intersection of Southeast Sixth Street and Scott Avenue in a few minutes, if you can think of a reason to go there. But if you want to build a nice bridge across the Des Moines River and construct a four-lane route between those two points, better plan on spending $23.5 million and don’t expect to arrive before 2010.

Want to connect downtown to Southeast 14th Street, where there’s enough traffic to fill up a new route? Figure on $49 million and a completion date of 2012.

Then there’s the audacious dream of reaching the real goal, Highway 65. When the planners don’t bother totaling the cost or setting a completion date, you know adventures lie ahead.

It should be a lot of fun for a half-generation of civil engineers. Designing a cool-looking yet not too expensive river bridge, exploring the murky depths of Dean Lake and finally ramping up and over a creek and a railroad line before swooping back down to Highway 65 – it sounds like a nice piece of work to put on your resume.

And maybe they’ll even find a way to stay within the budget. Or maybe not.