Kansas City

[Henry]

Exit numbering is also interesting on the downtown loop.


I guess downtown Kansas City is one of the best served downtowns in the U.S. by freeways.

I agree. BTW, I think the reason that I, O and Z are not used as suffixes is because they would be confused with numbers (1, 0 and 2, respectively).

[intelati49]

Was the interchange at the Jackson Curve on Interstate 70 meant to tie into the Crosstown Expressway leading east? Also what was planned to tie into I-70 at Myrtle Avenue (Exit 5B)?

For both questions, the answer is that the South East trafficway was going to tie into I-70. That road was meant the tie into Swope parkway east of the Blue river.

There was an alternative route for I-70 or the "Southeast freeway" that lead from that same location to Paseo and US71 (South Midtown Freeway)

Source: 1956 Expressway plan

[Alex]

Was the interchange at the Jackson Curve on Interstate 70 meant to tie into the Crosstown Expressway leading east? Also what was planned to tie into I-70 at Myrtle Avenue (Exit 5B)?

For both questions, the answer is that the South East trafficway was going to tie into I-70. That road was meant the tie into Swope parkway east of the Blue river.

There was an alternative route for I-70 or the "Southeast freeway" that lead from that same location to Paseo and US71 (South Midtown Freeway)

Source: 1956 Expressway plan

Thanks for that, I am writing up a blog post from our drive through Kansas City last month and was wondering about both turns of I-70 with the 45 MPH speed advisory signs. I posted a map scan from 1961 of Kansas City to the Interstate 29 Guide and saw both stubs acknowledged but never found them elsewhere.

[J N Winkler]

The expressway plan called for relaxed standards anyway--ISTR a throwaway reference to minimum horizontal and vertical curve radii of 1000 ft.  For this reason, as well as the fact that Kansas City streets have a rather low unit lane width (10 ft, I think), I generally prefer to bypass KC on I-435 and I-470 unless I actually have a destination within town, or am looking at the infrastructure itself.

[Revive 755]

From the 1978 Transportation Plan for the Kansas City area:

[Revive 755]

Dusting of this thread . . .

This blog has a couple interesting scans I don't recall seeing before, including a map that shows the unbuilt east-west facility between the Jackson Curve on I-70 and I-35 as MO Route 735:
Link

[dvferyance]

^^ That's the weirdest exit numbering scheme I've ever seen. I haven't seen an exit with a suffix above "D."

IIRC Many years ago, I remember traveling I-43 just north of I-94 and seeing an exit 1U.

Now, this was before I-43 was extended to Beloit.

I remember that too my guess is they used higher letters to avoid confusion with the nearby I-794 exits. I-794 has an exit 1H and I-894 and an exit 1E. Not to mention I-90/94 in Chicago has an exit 51I.

[rte66man]

Dusting of this thread . . .

This blog has a couple interesting scans I don't recall seeing before, including a map that shows the unbuilt east-west facility between the Jackson Curve on I-70 and I-35 as MO Route 735:
Link

Wow, quite a find.  Thanks for posting.

[Alex]

Map excerpt to show the unbuilt routes and the alignment change west of the downtown loop from the plan.  The black dashes are freeways, the white dashes are alternatives, the dashes filled with diagonal lines are expressways.

Could you repost this map? Was wondering more about the wide median at the north end of the Turkey Creek Expressway, where I-35 overtakes the Southwest Trafficway. Is this what Jonathan was referring to?

*  What is now the I-35 Turkey Creek Expressway is shown as full freeway to the 63rd Street corridor (then US 50), and "expressway-other" (not freeway) south of there.  An alternate routing was suggested for part of it, which would have paralleled Southwest Blvd. on the south rather than the north.