Construction on Roy Blunt Luminary Park, which will put a greenspace above I-670, will begin Dec. 2 and will disrupt surrounding traffic for two years.
The completed project will reconnect neighborhoods and allow for walking paths, playground equipment and other typical park features in the middle of downtown Kansas City.
“When I-670 was constructed back in the '60s, they actually created a divide, kind of an urban canyon through downtown, really separated downtown from those neighborhoods to the southeast and west,” said Jeff Martin, Kansas City’s assistant city manager. “So this will reconnect those.”
According to the project website, phase one of the construction will close I-670 from I-35 to U.S. 71, plus east and westbound Truman Rd. from Broadway Blvd. to Baltimore Ave. Other streets and lanes will be intermittently closed throughout.
For time efficiency and safety, both directions of the south side of the I-670 loop will be closed, rather than reducing lanes.
“We’re able to complete the project more quickly with the shutdown, as well as being safer for those contractors, those workers, and the traveling public,” Martin said.
Martin said much of the traffic in that area will be shifted to the north loop of I-670, but no single detour will be best for all drivers.
The Improve I-70 project will also add to Kansas Citian’s traffic disruption.
In January, I-70 from Paseo Blvd. and Van Brunt will be closed in both directions for 11 months. Approximately 105,000 vehicles use the corridor daily.
James Pflum, the MoDOT project director for Improve I-70, said this section of the highway is 60 years old.
“At a point where we don't need to address one thing, we're actually addressing multiple things,” Pflum said.
Modeling by MoDOT showed that reducing lanes, rather than closing them fully, would create an estimated 50-minute delay; a wreck would shut the interstate down completely. With the closure planned in advance, the department says work can be done more safely and efficiently, while the detours offer more reliable options for drivers.
A shutdown of this scale hasn’t happened anywhere across Missouri in 20 years, according to Pflum.
In planning, the department grouped travelers into three categories: community traffic, commuter traffic and regional traffic.
“For us, it's really about coordinating all those different groups and where their detour is going and things like that,” Pflum said.
With two interstates in Kansas City facing overlapping closures, Pflum said regional traffic should use interstates 435 and 470 as detours.
City roads around the I-70 construction area were rebuilt in preparation for increased traffic due to the closure, and should make easy access for community traffic.
But Pflum warned that drivers shouldn’t rely on city streets to carry that entire volume.
“If you lived in the communities and used city streets to get around, we want you to be able to do that,” Pflum said. “It's really those commuters, making sure that if they're using a state highway before, that they use the state highway as an alternate route.”
Pflum suggests drivers test new routes prior to the closures.
“You think about people that have driven this route for 15 years at this point, and they've never taken another route, and now we're asking them to change their driving pattern,” Pflum said. “Doing that before day one of the closure is very important.”
- James Pflum, Missouri Department of Transportation-KC Improve I-70 project director
- Jeff Martin, Kansas City, Missouri assistant city manager
