71 Highway Claims More Victims In Kansas City

[ShawnP]

The poorly designed highway called 71 thru Kansas City has unfortunately claimed more victims. Will post the next time this poorly designed project claims it's next victims. It's not a matter of if it will claim but when as it begging to be upgraded to Interstate standards.

http://www.kansascity.com/2010/07/06/2066154/crash-shuts-down-us-71.html

[US71]

There is still some question whether it will be upgraded. I think a lot depends on if this section will become part of I-49 or not.

Still, the melodramatics need to be aimed where they will do the most good: Kansas City or MoDOT .

[ShawnP]

MODOT won't give in until local pols make the move. It's up to us to put that pressure. I have been back to KC since 03 and ten plus people have died in that short stretch due to design issues.

[US71]

MODOT won't give in until local pols make the move. It's up to us to put that pressure. I have been back to KC since 03 and ten plus people have died in that short stretch due to design issues.

You can't just say "design issues". Some it is individual stupidity (like driving too fast). Even if it that section was controlled access, you'd still have stupid people causing accidents. Are the at-grade intersections to blame? In part, yes, but not totally. I've driven that area numerous times and have never had a problem, in part because I am extra careful.

[Scott5114]

When you have a section of non-access controlled highway wedged in between two segments of controlled access freeway, you're probably going to end up with some spectacular crashes.

[InterstateNG]

This particular instance seems to have very little to do with design issues.

[ShawnP]

Yes and no on design issues........if this area was a freeway more people would have had the ability to get out of the way of the driver going the wrong. Instead since this area has lights they were stopped and sitting ducks for this crazed driver.

[huskeroadgeek]

I make many trips through KC from I-29 north of the city to US 71 south of the city. Staying on I-29 to downtown and then picking up the US 71 freeway would seem like a logical route to take even considering the extra traffic you pick up going through downtown, but I never take that route due to the traffic lights on US 71(I always take I-435, usually on the west side, but sometimes on the east). It really makes it less viable as a connector from downtown to the south. To me if you're going to have a freeway, then make it all a freeway-sticking the at-grade intersections in the middle of it makes it even worse than if the whole thing was just an expressway with at-grade intersections.

[ShawnP]

I posted this because I fear it is only a matter of time at one of the three lights that a school bus gets hit by traffic. I'm just one person but if we get lots of people maybe we can get the right thing done and upgrade this highway to a safer road. Like you Husker I avoid that road due to the back up's and overall danger involved with those three lights. I lived in Belton south of KC and worked off the plaza for 3 years. The most direct route was 71 but due to those lights and backups I avoided the area. So those lights actually hurt the neighborhood more than they help it.

[agentsteel53]

wait, what?  because some jackass in a stolen car decides to take a holiday from obeying the rules of the road, the highway is declared to be the problem?

right.

[US71]

I posted this because I fear it is only a matter of time at one of the three lights that a school bus gets hit by traffic. I'm just one person but if we get lots of people maybe we can get the right thing done and upgrade this highway to a safer road. Like you Husker I avoid that road due to the back up's and overall danger involved with those three lights. I lived in Belton south of KC and worked off the plaza for 3 years. The most direct route was 71 but due to those lights and backups I avoided the area. So those lights actually hurt the neighborhood more than they help it.

Then talk to the city. Start a petition drive. Do research showing the potential for a catastrophic accident. Of course, nothing will happen for the next 5 years since MoDOT has no money, but you can try.

[agentsteel53]

I posted this because I fear it is only a matter of time at one of the three lights that a school bus gets hit by traffic.

because the lives of schoolbus dwellers are in some way more important than those of the occupants of other vehicles. 

[ShawnP]

Yes the highway was part of the problem because the vehicles that were hit were stopped at one of the lights that should have never been put on the road. If they were moving they had a much better chance at avoiding this crazy driver.

[agentsteel53]

Yes the highway was part of the problem because the vehicles that were hit were stopped at one of the lights that should have never been put on the road. If they were moving they had a much better chance at avoiding this crazy driver.

that is an exceedingly minor point in the cost calculation of a traffic light.  As much as I'd like to see the elimination of all traffic lights in all existence, attempting to use this argument is really, really a stretch. 

[J N Winkler]

Axe-grinding is not much fun for anybody.  The traffic lights were not put in because they were cheaper--at this point the forgone time savings probably amount to several times the construction cost savings of installing traffic lights versus building grade separations, for a road which opened (if memory serves) in 2002.  No.  The traffic lights are there because they are stipulated by a court settlement and the alternative was to have no expressway-grade road at all between the downtown loop and the then unfinished South Midtown Freeway spur.

It will not be possible to get agreement to eliminate the traffic lights purely on efficiency grounds.  A better strategy IMO would be to approach directly the community leaders who were responsible for the court settlement, and persuade them that the grade separations would actually be more beneficial to their interests than having the lights.  So, ShawnP, how good are you at negotiating with black ministers?

[agentsteel53]

The traffic lights are there because they are stipulated by a court settlement and the alternative was to have no expressway-grade road at all between the downtown loop and the then unfinished South Midtown Freeway spur.

wait, how did that happen?  half a freeway riot is what it sounds like, but what are the details?

[J N Winkler]

The KC Star had extensive coverage some years ago when Bruce R. Watkins Drive (as the recently built portion of the US 71 urban expressway is called) opened.  My memory of it is somewhat hazy, and I doubt it is archived in a free source, but as I recall it was a standard "white men's road through black men's bedrooms" scenario.  MoDOT (or rather its predecessor agency) handled it with what seems to have been more than the usual lack of tact--minimum public information, EIS priced at $100 (a huge sum in the late 1960's) and otherwise difficult for interested people in the community to access, etc.--and eventually a lawsuit was filed, whose settlement dictated the present design of the road.  I suspect the traffic lights were marketed as "context-sensitive design," with community leaders agreeing to them because they thought the lights would make the road less attractive to traffic, thus keeping volumes and noise levels down, and MoDOT capitulating in order to salvage some semblance of the original plan.

[ShawnP]

Well the key to fix the highway lies with one Reverand Emauel Clever aka Congressmen.

[J N Winkler]

So have you written to the Rev. Cleaver?

[agentsteel53]

I suspect the traffic lights were marketed as "context-sensitive design," with community leaders agreeing to them because they thought the lights would make the road less attractive to traffic, thus keeping volumes and noise levels down, and MoDOT capitulating in order to salvage some semblance of the original plan.

ugh.  turn the damn things off.  I don't suppose the original agreement explicitly stipulated working traffic lights.  Oh, it did?  Set them to flash yellow for the mainline, red for the side streets. 

[bugo]

It will not be possible to get agreement to eliminate the traffic lights purely on efficiency grounds.  A better strategy IMO would be to approach directly the community leaders who were responsible for the court settlement, and persuade them that the grade separations would actually be more beneficial to their interests than having the lights.  So, ShawnP, how good are you at negotiating with black ministers?

Those ministers have blood on their hands.  It makes me wish I believed in an afterlife so I'd know they would be held accountable for the deaths they have directly caused by their selfishness.

[bugo]

The KC Star had extensive coverage some years ago when Bruce R. Watkins Drive (as the recently built portion of the US 71 urban expressway is called) opened.  My memory of it is somewhat hazy, and I doubt it is archived in a free source, but as I recall it was a standard "white men's road through black men's bedrooms" scenario. 

That is bullshit.  Total bullshit.  When I lived in Kansas City, I drove US 71 from Bannister Road to Blue Parkway and saw many, many black drivers on the highway.  These assholes who prevented the road from being built as a freeway just wanted to stick it to whitey.  Fuck racists of all colors.

[bugo]

I suspect the traffic lights were marketed as "context-sensitive design," with community leaders agreeing to them because they thought the lights would make the road less attractive to traffic, thus keeping volumes and noise levels down, and MoDOT capitulating in order to salvage some semblance of the original plan.

ugh.  turn the damn things off.  I don't suppose the original agreement explicitly stipulated working traffic lights.  Oh, it did?  Set them to flash yellow for the mainline, red for the side streets. 

I have no idea if they still do it, but as of about 8 years ago at night they did set the lights to flashing yellow and red.

[mgk920]

The other option will be to wait until that old gentry dies off and the younger crowd (with no memory of that crap) takes over and realizes that something is indeed very wrong with how things are along that highway.



Mike

[agentsteel53]

The other option will be to wait until that old gentry dies off and the younger crowd (with no memory of that crap) takes over and realizes that something is indeed very wrong with how things are along that highway.



Mike

the Khrushchev approach to Dixiecrats: we will bury you!