City officials are recommending the transformation of a portion of U.S. Highway 71 through southeast Kansas City into something that more resembles a parkway, and they're asking for feedback on the idea from residents.
They pitched the plan during a community meeting Tuesday at the St. James United Methodist Church, less than a mile from Highway 71, where a table dedicated to the parkway alternative had buckets labeled "yes," "no," and "neutral" so people could vote on the plan using colored balls.
As the meeting wound down, the "yes" bucket held the most votes.
"Safety is always the No. 1," said Kansas City resident Rudy Rhodes, who attended his first Reconnect the East Side meeting Tuesday.
Rhodes used to live around the highway and still has siblings who live near it. He said he likes the parkway option.
"For the parkway, the trees and things is more relaxing, more of a family feeling," he said.
The city recommendation marks another step forward in a yearslong initiative to remedy problems caused by the construction of Highway 71, in the latter half of the 20th century. In recent months, city staff has refined and studied alternatives to the 5-mile stretch of highway between Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard and 85th Street.
In what the city is describing as a "grade-separated parkway," the highway roads would be built below ground level and have the feel of a parkway, with narrow lanes and shoulders and new interchanges to allow drivers on and off. Overpasses at ground level, like the one where Gregory Boulevard currently intersects with the highway, would connect neighborhoods east to west.
Robust public engagement
In November, city staffers presented three alternatives to change Highway 71: transform it into a traditional highway with no stoplights, return it to the original street grid or change it into a boulevard with more stoplights.
The project came after the city received a $5 million federal grant from the Biden administration. Kansas City and the Missouri Department of Transportation contributed an additional $2.5 million to the project.
The city spent months gathering feedback on the alternatives.
"I've never in my career seen a project have more public engagement and public involvement opportunities than I have with this project," said City Transportation Director Jason Waldron.
City staff also analyzed how the options might achieve the project's three goals of improving traffic safety and mobility, addressing environmental issues like car and noise pollution, and bringing economic growth back to the Prospect Avenue corridor.
"Prospect was a busy roadway — businesses blooming, a lot of houses and people living, children playing," remembered 5th District-at-Large Council member Darrell Curls, who said he lived in the area before the highway was built.
"They thought at the time that this was going to be a better opportunity," Curls said of Highway 71's construction. "Well, guess what? They were wrong."
Analysis from the city's team found that returning the area to its original street grid did not meet project goals, rendering it the weakest option of the three. Most residents said ripping out the highway was not likely to bring back the homes that were destroyed, and the families displaced, by the highway's construction.
The boulevard and freeway alternatives came with their own pros and cons.
A boulevard, like Ward Parkway, would support more stoplights but would not improve traffic congestion through the area.
With a freeway, the city would consider adding interchanges and overpasses, removing stoplights at 59th and 55th streets, and building the roadway below or above ground. While a traditional freeway would improve traffic flow, city staff said, the fix mostly prioritizes suburban drivers looking a quicker route through.
There was also public resistance at Tuesday's community meeting to the idea of a more traditional freeway — the same thing residents vehemently pushed back against when the highway tore through their neighborhoods decades ago.
"I just felt like it did not respect the spirit of what the project is supposed to be about," said Kansas City resident Avery Jones, a community organizer with BikeWalkKC. "We say we're going to reconnect communities, and then we double down on having something that makes suburbanites go through the city faster."
So, the city landed on a hybrid parkway option that blends the boulevard and freeway concepts.
Jones said it has the potential to combine the best of both options.
"If it really does achieve the feeling of having a tall, tree-lined parkway with complete streets surrounding it and multimodal options on the off-ramps," Jones said. "I think that it could succeed in making the neighborhood feel like it's connected."
If public consensus gathers around the grade-separated parkway idea, the city will take the next big step of asking a federal judge to lift a consent decree that dictates Highway 71's current configuration. That is critical to make big changes to the roadway.
Project analysis found the freeway option would cost between $130 million and $150 million, and the boulevard option would cost between $70 million and $90 million. It's unclear how much the grade-separated parkway concept would cost, or where the money would come from.
Kansas City residents can submit their feedback on the proposal at the Reconnecting the East Side website.
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