I-70 Topeka Polk-Quincy Viaduct changes.

[route56]

This summer, KDOT started a project to make repairs on the I-70 bridges through Downtown Topeka, including the Polk-Quincy viaduct.

During the course of the project, part of the barrier wall on the viaduct broke off and fell into a parking lot. Fortunately, the lot was vacant and no people were hurt or cars damaged.

https://www.wibw.com/2022/07/01/crews-working-remove-barrier-wall-along-polk-quincy-viaduct-i-70-downtown-topeka/

KDOT wound up removing the rest of the bad railing and installed a chain-link fence. The outside lanes continued to be closed during the construction season.

This past weekend, KDOT closed the Polk-Quincy viaduct to set up the viaduct for its final configuration.

https://www.wibw.com/2022/11/28/i-70-close-both-directions-different-times-first-weekend-december/

The Polk-Quincy viaduct is now permanently reduced to one lane in each direction across the Viaduct. The right lane drops off westbound at Adams and eastbound at 1st Street. The travel lane across the viaduct is shifted outward from the center, giving a little more shoulder.

A yellow sign has been posted just before the East Topeka exit advising that I-70 is reduced to one lane through downtown, and to encourage thru traffic to use I-470.

[Plutonic Panda]

No dropping to one lane is not good man.

[Scott5114]

If they're going to permanently reduce the viaduct to two lanes, they need to just reroute I-70 over I-470. A two-lane viaduct in an urban area isn't an Interstate.

[J N Winkler]

If they're going to permanently reduce the viaduct to two lanes, they need to just reroute I-70 over I-470. A two-lane viaduct in an urban area isn't an Interstate.

It sounds like the "permanent" reduction is just for this structure, with construction of its replacements--which together will carry two lanes in each direction--due to start in 2025.

[Plutonic Panda]

If they're going to permanently reduce the viaduct to two lanes, they need to just reroute I-70 over I-470. A two-lane viaduct in an urban area isn't an Interstate.

It sounds like the "permanent" reduction is just for this structure, with construction of its replacements--which together will carry two lanes in each direction--due to start in 2025.

Should be designed to be 3x3. Kinda short sighted.

[J N Winkler]

Should be designed to be 3x3. Kinda short sighted.

I suspect it will be adequate for the foreseeable future.  Unlike Wichita, whose population has increased with every census, Topeka actually lost people in 2020 and has only about 1,000 more people than it did in 1970.  It has also lost big employers like the AT&SF.

[seicer]

If they're going to permanently reduce the viaduct to two lanes, they need to just reroute I-70 over I-470. A two-lane viaduct in an urban area isn't an Interstate.

An urban interstate doesn't equate to high traffic counts nor to an artificial lane count based on some arbitrary notion that urban areas need more lanes.

- I-81 through downtown Syracuse, New York functions quite well as a four-lane viaduct. Its re-routing to the I-481 bypass works quite well because of the viaduct's low traffic counts.
- I-64 through Cherokee Park in Louisville, Kentucky functions quite well with a four-lane tunnel. While there was a plan for a third tunnel bore, high costs led to the proposal to simply widen I-71 and ramps on I-264.
- I-64 and I-77 through Charleston, West Virginia have four-lane segments.

There are other examples. Regardless, the viaduct is being planned for expansion if it warrants it in the future (https://5516384e-9248-42bd-9775-cd9cbd001bfb.filesusr.com/ugd/d81461_613deb24ed374c8ab7be4fd88e9fa622.pdf).

[Scott5114]

If they're going to permanently reduce the viaduct to two lanes, they need to just reroute I-70 over I-470. A two-lane viaduct in an urban area isn't an Interstate.

An urban interstate doesn't equate to high traffic counts nor to an artificial lane count based on some arbitrary notion that urban areas need more lanes.

They're not reducing it to two lanes in each direction. It's two lanes total. That does not meet Interstate standard even for rural areas.

[seicer]

Even still, it's temporary and done as a safety measure until a new viaduct is in place. There is an adequate alternate route that through traffic can take, and it's what the DOT recommends (https://goo.gl/maps/KQqCLqXy6W8GeGSL6). It's not unprecedented, and there isn't much that can be done until either new barriers are in place (which would be a waste of taxpayer dollars) or a new viaduct is constructed.

I can give you a list of interstates that have one-lane (in each direction) segments. The affected portion is just 3,300 feet or so.

[skluth]

This is going to be a very unpopular opinion here but it probably won't matter because I doubt there are many urbanist types in Topeka.  I-70 could easily be removed from Polk to SE 10th Av without much impact on most drivers. I remember driving through Topeka a few times on I-70 and never noticed much traffic and very little was going through Topeka like me. I could have easily used I-470 but I didn't want to pay the extra 50¢ or whatever for five more miles of Kansas Turnpike; there was little difference in time either way. Out of area traffic going north of the river will use either KS 4 or US 75, so they don't need I-70 through Topeka either. So the only drivers on I-70 through Topeka besides the locals are shunpikers like me.

Don't worry. It ain't happening.

[triplemultiplex]

I would actually agree that it's feasible to just demolish I-70 through Topeka and send it over 470.  It's a convoluted path through the city with goofy curves and ugly bridges.  And Topeka isn't a big enough city to warrant a freeway through the heart of the it.

The fun part comes in thinking up a better way to do the South Topeka interchange in this scenario.  One would want a much smoother transition for I-70 from freeway to turnpike.  I was recently panning around the area thinking up what it might look like if it was built like that originally, with I-70 going around rather than punching the core. (I'm thinking there'd be no freeway west of downtown and a spur poking in from the east.)

This being Kansas, though, there's no way they're not going to simply replace the elevated structure as-is.  They don't have the balls to try anything else.

[J N Winkler]

I don't think getting rid of I-70 in west Topeka would work.  This segment is actually pretty busy, to the extent it has been widened to (almost) three lanes divided by adding a lane at every entry that is dropped at the next exit.  It actually carries more traffic than the segment between downtown and the East Topeka Interchange.

[silverback1065]

I'd remove it from Downtown Topeka and get rid of the death curve in KCK.

[route56]

Photos of the new configuration of the Polk-Quincy:


Warning sign westbound on the Turnpike approaching East Topeka.


New sign for Adams on the California Avenue bridge.


New lane markings between California Avenue and Adams Street.


New exit sign for Adams.


Approaching the 45 MPH curve.


The new barriers on the Polk-Quincy Viaduct.


The right lane picks up at the west end of the Polk-Quincy Viaduct.

[mvak36]

They had an open house yesterday for this project: https://www.polkquincy.org/open-house

Meeting materials are at the bottom of the page. Presentation slides and FAQ's.

Project tentatively scheduled to start in early 2025 and scheduled to go until Fall 2027.

EDIT: There's also an East Project (KA-1266-05) that hasn't been funded yet and is not in the IKE program. Diagram of that project is shown on page 2 of this pdf.

[KCRoadFan]

They had an open house yesterday for this project: https://www.polkquincy.org/open-house

Dang it - if I'd known about the open house, I would have driven over to attend. I live an hour away in KC.

If there's another one coming up soon, please let me know! Thanks.

[mvak36]

They had an open house yesterday for this project: https://www.polkquincy.org/open-house

Dang it - if I'd known about the open house, I would have driven over to attend. I live an hour away in KC.

If there's another one coming up soon, please let me know! Thanks.

If I find out in time, I will. I only found out about this last one this morning.

[triplemultiplex]

Is the reason they're putting so much space between the carriageways over the elevated portion because they think it'll reduce the amount of looming shadow for cross-freeway access?  This new r/w is gigantic for a nominally urban freeway.  Seems like they could have been more space conscious for a simple, 6 lane freeway.

The viaduct itself seems to be driven largely by topography, as I-70 is coming down onto the historic floodplain of the Kansas River as it makes that westerly curve.  So putting the new freeway below street grade will run into water table issues and flooding potential.
Still, I am struck by how this is a big freeway for Topeka; a city that isn't really large enough on paper to justify both a freeway through the core and a bypass route.  But we've already touched on that upthread.

[KCRoadFan]

Still, I am struck by how this is a big freeway for Topeka; a city that isn't really large enough on paper to justify both a freeway through the core and a bypass route.  But we've already touched on that upthread.

Well, if Wheeling, West Virginia (population about 26,000) can have both an I-70 and an I-470 running parallel through town, then so can Topeka, which is 100,000 people larger than Wheeling. Just my opinion.

[seicer]

Topeka doesn't have a tunnel with one through lane.

[zzcarp]

Topeka doesn't have a tunnel with one through lane.

Neither does Wheeling. Eastbound has two through lanes, and westbound is two lanes with one being an exit-only as you leave the tunnel. The problem is with the WV-2 interchange, not the tunnels.

[seicer]

Topeka doesn't have a tunnel with one through lane.

Neither does Wheeling. Eastbound has two through lanes, and westbound is two lanes with one being an exit-only as you leave the tunnel. The problem is with the WV-2 interchange, not the tunnels.

The left lane is the through lane in both bores. You also cannot change lanes, effectively making it one lane as there is no way to change lanes between the WV 2 and US 250 interchanges.

I-70 through Wheeling, WV has an AADT of nearly 35,000 east of the US 250 interchange with I-470 having an AADT of nearly 28,000.

I-70 has an AADT of 33,700 through central Topeka, KS, and I-470 has an AADT of just over 39,000.

This is splitting hairs but traffic counts aren't the only justification for additional lanes. Two through lanes have been found to be adequate for i-70 in central Topeka, and it has apparently functioned well with one through lane on the viaduct, although this isn't an ideal situation. For Wheeling, the steep grades justify climbing lanes, with six-lane segments west and east of the city that function adequately.

[triplemultiplex]

Wheeling is a very special case.  If one was designing freeways through there from scratch, you'd do the tunnels right or go around enough to not need them. But either way, only build one east-west freeway. Instead, they did a half-ass job/tried to incorporate existing tunnelage, then soon realized that wasn't going to cut it, so they built 470.

I feel like if Topeka wasn't the capital, there's no way they punch I-70 thru town.  It would dodge the city to the southwest to meet the turnpike; maybe you'd get a spur poking in from one end or the other.  But I'm sure the state government people were like, hey, we can use federal money to give ourselves a slightly faster trip to work, so let's do it!  I suspect some of that might be at play again with this rebuild.
You see the slide in that one document that shows how they could add a fourth lane to the viaduct in the future if need be?  That's pretty funny.

[silverback1065]

Wheeling is a very special case.  If one was designing freeways through there from scratch, you'd do the tunnels right or go around enough to not need them. But either way, only build one east-west freeway. Instead, they did a half-ass job/tried to incorporate existing tunnelage, then soon realized that wasn't going to cut it, so they built 470.

I feel like if Topeka wasn't the capital, there's no way they punch I-70 thru town.  It would dodge the city to the southwest to meet the turnpike; maybe you'd get a spur poking in from one end or the other.  But I'm sure the state government people were like, hey, we can use federal money to give ourselves a slightly faster trip to work, so let's do it!  I suspect some of that might be at play again with this rebuild.
You see the slide in that one document that shows how they could add a fourth lane to the viaduct in the future if need be?  That's pretty funny.

i've always thought that was why 70 goes through topeka. just because it's the capital and at the time it was a cool idea to have one of the 1st interstates to be in your city limits. 

[Urban Prairie Schooner]

Seems like a lot of structures are going to be cleared for this project.  Looks like mostly old warehouses but some of the structures appear to be potentially historic.