Inside Kansas City’s Greg Klice Community Center Tuesday night, dozens of Kansas City area residents looked over detailed maps, photos, and information about the imminent closure of one of Kansas City’s busiest stretches of highway. Many had questions about how the massive construction project will affect commute times, and what exactly is being fixed.
The Improve I-70 Kansas City project is an 11-month, $237 million project from the Missouri Department of Transportation. The stretch of roadway between Paseo Boulevard and Van Brunt Boulevard will be fully closed starting January 11. Workers will add a fourth lane to sections of the highway, replace or rehabilitate 22 bridges and make other road and pedestrian improvements.
Monica Nance, an employee of Kansas City Public Schools, said she drives on I-70 at least four times a week.
“I’m an interstate driver — I don’t like driving in the city unless I have to,” Nance said. “I live just a few blocks from here, and so it's easy (to get) on, easy off, and that’s the way I like it.”
Nance says she deals with interstate traffic at all times of the day while she visits different schools. She said it’s important for her to get an understanding of the project because she has yet to prepare an alternate route to her locations.
“I’m not prepared for that… I’m really going to have to leave earlier or prepare earlier. If I have to be at a school at, say, at 10 o’clock, I’m going to have to leave probably at 8:15 just to make sure I get to my destination time.”
Despite the longer commute, Nance says the project is definitely needed.
“A lot of the bridges were in bad repair, and we certainly don’t want them to fall on someone as they're driving, so I do believe that it is needed. It was just kind of a shock to find out a large portion of I-70 will be closed for 11 months.”
MoDOT project director James Pflum said officials have had their eyes on this corridor since 2000.
“You're looking at a corridor that's 60 years old at this point. And so we're trying to address not just one thing but four different things,” said Pflum. “We've got low vertical clearance and narrow shoulders that, you know, it met the standards back in the day but now it needs to be updated. We've got infrastructure that's in poor condition.”
Pflum said the corridor, which sees up to 105,000 vehicles a day, has a long history of crashes and congestion. Pflum said while some people can expect 20-minute detours, this project overall is good for the city.
“That's people that are going to their jobs, that's commerce, that's freight. That's everything that's supporting Kansas City, going through this corridor. And so when we get done, we'll be able to provide a more reliable system that requires less maintenance and really resets a lot for that corridor.”
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