Prospect Avenue is one of Kansas City’s most dangerous streets. The past few years saw nine fatal car crashes along the road, making it one of the 10 deadliest in the city.
A $10 million Safe Streets and Roads 4 All grant from the U.S. Department of Transportation will help Kansas City make Prospect safer for everyone who uses it. Kansas City will contribute $2.5 million of city funds to the project, for a total of $12.5 million.
The grant will fund improvements along a 1.86 mile stretch of Prospect Avenue, between Linwood and Emanuel Cleaver II Boulevards. It’s on Kansas City’s high injury network for crashes — from 2018 to 2022, there were 117 car crashes along that corridor alone.
Standing on the corner of 39th Street and Prospect Ave., Kansas City Council member Melissa Patterson Hazley said the safety improvements are important to a healthy Kansas City.
“There's lots of traffic, there's lots of cars parked on the street,” said the councilwoman, whose district includes the area targeted for safety measures. “We definitely need to increase the tree canopy in this corridor, make it more walkable so that folks can get to the Aldi’s in a comfortable stretch of this corridor.”
Kansas City’s most dangerous streets are mostly concentrated in disinvested areas, where crumbling infrastructure makes walking and biking even more dangerous. Black Kansas Citians are twice as likely to be killed or injured in car crashes than their white counterparts.
Eric Rogers, co-founder of the advocacy group BikeWalkKC, says the grant will help Kansas City start to address those inequities.
“I think this project is so exciting because it's really prioritizing a part of the city and communities that are most impacted by traffic violence,” Rogers said. “It's really driven by the data that shows where there's the need.”
The money will be used to implement sidewalk and bus stop improvements, curb extensions, reflective backplates on traffic signals, pedestrian-level lighting and other safety improvements.
Council member Darrell Curls said he’s glad to see funds coming to a main thoroughfare for the city’s Black community.
“Anytime that we can invest more money in this corridor, I'm all for it,” Curls said.
City staff said community engagement efforts will begin in one year, with construction improvements coming in two years.
The project is part of the city’s Vision Zero program to end traffic deaths by 2030. The city quadrupled the program’s budget, giving it $4 million to make road safety improvements. That includes road diets, which reduce the number of driving lanes in favor of bikes, medians and wider sidewalks.
Most recently, the city changed a stretch of Emanuel Cleaver II Boulevard — also one of the city’s most dangerous roads — to reduce the number of lanes from four to two and add protected bike lanes and pedestrian crossings.
More than 400 people were killed in car crashes in Kansas City between 2017 and 2021, according to the grant.
“A big part of the Vision Zero philosophy is that crashes are preventable, that they are a public health hazard that can be prevented,” Rogers said. “You do that by changing the system that people are moving around in, by improving the infrastructure and prioritizing infrastructure that keeps pedestrians safe.”
