Capping the Loop

Issues concerning Downtown as described by the Downtown Council. River to 31st Street, I-35 to Bruce R. Watkins.
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alejandro46
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Re: Capping the Loop

Post by alejandro46 »

kboish wrote:
hartliss wrote:
kboish wrote:

Apparently the Unified Gov (KCK) is formerly opposing the removal of the North Loop and has stated they will not support it through the MARC process. Their concern is the potential affect of an additional 3 minutes of congestion to the PM commute.
Um, for real? Source?
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Dear Mister Man Sir,

I formerly request that we remove Wyandotte Country from the Metro Area and that you cease slighting the good Kansas City name by causing damage to our reputation and mass confusion and/or hysteria throughout the god-fearing people of these United States. The good people of Kansas City were not given good and sufficient time and notice of your continued name theft, and as such it presumes to cause the loss of at least 3 minutes of the good people of Kansas City, Missouri's time, explaining to such people of other, lesser states, that our fair city is located in Missouri, not Kansas.

Sincerely,

Kansas City, Missouri.
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Re: Capping the Loop

Post by anonkcmo »

alejandro46 wrote: Dear Mister Man Sir,

I formerly request that we remove Wyandotte Country from the Metro Area and that you cease slighting the good Kansas City name by causing damage to our reputation and mass confusion and/or hysteria throughout the god-fearing people of these United States. The good people of Kansas City were not given good and sufficient time and notice of your continued name theft, and as such it presumes to cause the loss of at least 3 minutes of the good people of Kansas City, Missouri's time, explaining to such people of other, lesser states, that our fair city is located in Missouri, not Kansas.

Sincerely,

Kansas City, Missouri.
This is Gold! :D :D :D
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rxlexi
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Re: Capping the Loop

Post by rxlexi »

That's crazy, though I suppose unsurprising.

More evidence that once you have provided road/freeway infrastructure or parking, it is very very difficult to remove or even "improve" such as road diets, etc.
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Re: Capping the Loop

Post by dnweava »

I 100% agree with Wyco.

Removing the north loop is going to be bad for traffic, the south loop doent meet interstate standards(and badly needs about a billion dollar rebuild) to be renamed I-70, and ignores the fact that they are spending 100s if millions upgrading tge KCK portion of the north loop. As someone who lived within 2 blocks of the north loop 6 if the last 10 years, I'm opposed to any plan to remove the highway. The land isn't needed for development (surface lots and cheap land downtown adjacent everywhere) and the traffic studies show that traffic will be significantly worse and that is with their bold assumptions of self driving cars and people using alternate routes.
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Re: Capping the Loop

Post by mykn »

dnweava wrote:I 100% agree with Wyco.

Removing the north loop is going to be bad for traffic, the south loop doent meet interstate standards(and badly needs about a billion dollar rebuild) to be renamed I-70, and ignores the fact that they are spending 100s if millions upgrading tge KCK portion of the north loop. As someone who lived within 2 blocks of the north loop 6 if the last 10 years, I'm opposed to any plan to remove the highway. The land isn't needed for development (surface lots and cheap land downtown adjacent everywhere) and the traffic studies show that traffic will be significantly worse and that is with their bold assumptions of self driving cars and people using alternate routes.
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Re: Capping the Loop

Post by flyingember »

If it can be closed for two years then it's just not needed as a road. It's not going to reopen until early 2020.

Sure, it's only WB traffic, but that is sending all KCK bound traffic onto other routes that can be used to prove the capacity needed for EB traffic too.
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Re: Capping the Loop

Post by dnweava »

flyingember wrote:If it can be closed for two years then it's just not needed as a road. It's not going to reopen until early 2020.

Sure, it's only WB traffic, but that is sending all KCK bound traffic onto other routes that can be used to prove the capacity needed for EB traffic too.
have you driven around the northloop during rush hour this week? I'm assuming not. It's an F-in nightmare around rush hour right now between all the closures (grand ave, 6th st, KCK viaduct, and Broadway bridge)
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Re: Capping the Loop

Post by grovester »

Let's design all of our car infrastructure around the twice daily 30 minutes periods that KC seems "congested".
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Re: Capping the Loop

Post by phuqueue »

Rush hour should always be a nightmare for drivers. Bending over backwards to accommodate drivers is how we ended up with "surface lots and cheap land downtown adjacent everywhere" in the first place. And KC's road network has plenty of slack to absorb the closure of the north loop anyway.
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Re: Capping the Loop

Post by GRID »

The only real bottleneck on the south side of the loop is people coming from or going to the 670 viaduct because it narrows to one through lane. You fix that and you have massive capacity, especially going to KCK where 670 is wide open with no resistance.

The North Loop is just not needed. All it does is slow through traffic down. Run all the traffic through 670, fix the choke points and let it be a little congested during peak hours and everything will be fine.

Having said that. It really does not seem like the North Loop should even remotely be a priority and it's not a priority or they would't be rebuilding the Lewis and Clark Viaduct back to an interstate route. They are rebuilding all of that viaduct and yet the dumbest part of the entire thing is not being fixed (where the INTERSTATE narrows to one lane and has a 90 degree turn lol.) Pretty sure most traffic and urban planners in KC went to JoCo community college.
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Re: Capping the Loop

Post by TheLastGentleman »

Since we're on the topic, will they be demolishing and replacing the older eastbound part of the L&C viaduct? The part with the bike trail. I've never heard any discussion of it
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Re: Capping the Loop

Post by KCPowercat »

dnweava wrote:
flyingember wrote:If it can be closed for two years then it's just not needed as a road. It's not going to reopen until early 2020.

Sure, it's only WB traffic, but that is sending all KCK bound traffic onto other routes that can be used to prove the capacity needed for EB traffic too.
have you driven around the northloop during rush hour this week? I'm assuming not. It's an F-in nightmare around rush hour right now between all the closures (grand ave, 6th st, KCK viaduct, and Broadway bridge)
This doesn't trump the positives for the neighborhood
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Re: Capping the Loop

Post by flyingember »

KCPowercat wrote:
dnweava wrote:
flyingember wrote:If it can be closed for two years then it's just not needed as a road. It's not going to reopen until early 2020.

Sure, it's only WB traffic, but that is sending all KCK bound traffic onto other routes that can be used to prove the capacity needed for EB traffic too.
have you driven around the northloop during rush hour this week? I'm assuming not. It's an F-in nightmare around rush hour right now between all the closures (grand ave, 6th st, KCK viaduct, and Broadway bridge)
This doesn't trump the positives for the neighborhood
My commute from the north, taking I-35 the east side of the loop (both the I-70 WB detour route and SB 169 detour route) is negligibly different. If I take 35 or Burlington depends on the exact traffic of the day, it's most often still quicker to follow the dual detour route.

None of this traffic is new, it's just moved where it appears at and many roads still aren't at capacity.

If you go further north into NKC, N. Oak traffic is maybe 10 cars worse at the same time. It backs up past 32nd St in the morning by 5 or 6 cars where before it backed up almost to 32nd. A light further north is the reason it backs up, there's tons of road capacity but the light at Vivion Rd causes all cars to clump together. You'll have 20 cars clustered together at a light and then 10 blocks of nothing.

The east side of the loop is a hair slower. It's always been bad because of too many people trying to get over two lanes to the left to stay on I-70 while other people are going two lanes to the right to get on 670. Traffic clears up immediately after these two ramps.

US 169 traffic always had a single lane to get onto I-35 SB and traffic would backup all the way to the downtown airport trying to get into downtown. This didn't change with the closures it just moved where it appears, to the north loop.

There's been the same traffic NB for years. Have you driven the west side of the loop in the past ten years? Traffic backs up from Broadway nearly all the way back to 12th St.

You'll frequently find a backup from the HOA Bridge NB lane to get onto I-70 EB in the morning and a long backup to get onto I-35 NB in the afternoon.

On Wednesday US 71 was backed up in all three lanes from I-70 to 22nd St. Meanwhile The Paseo was empty. This is normal too. The Paseo only has traffic at the Indep Ave and I-70 lights. If US 71 is backed up past The Paseo heading NB only a fool won't get off onto The Paseo.



Bad road design is the cause of so many traffic problems and by simplifying the designs we can add capacity without adding lanes.

The US 71 NB issues are caused by Hospital Hill to JoCo traffic all taking the same route on because there's no faster WB road and ramps to SB I-35 and all this traffic needs to change lanes three times to get that direction combined with all 71 NB traffic being funneled into one lane. The traffic is caused by merging. (the only SB 35 access ramps are at 21st which are a practical pain to get to from hospital hill)

670 WB is bad because all 35 SB traffic has to go all the way to the left, move the ramp to the right and keep through traffic on the inside. The traffic is caused by merging.

The 169 problems are entirely caused by being combined with city streets, changing this is part of the new bridge plan.

The east side traffic is caused by too much merging.

The north loop EB traffic is caused by too much merging.
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Re: Capping the Loop

Post by dnweava »

GRID wrote:The only real bottleneck on the south side of the loop is people coming from or going to the 670 viaduct because it narrows to one through lane. You fix that and you have massive capacity, especially going to KCK where 670 is wide open with no resistance.

The North Loop is just not needed. All it does is slow through traffic down. Run all the traffic through 670, fix the choke points and let it be a little congested during peak hours and everything will be fine.

Having said that. It really does not seem like the North Loop should even remotely be a priority and it's not a priority or they would't be rebuilding the Lewis and Clark Viaduct back to an interstate route. They are rebuilding all of that viaduct and yet the dumbest part of the entire thing is not being fixed (where the INTERSTATE narrows to one lane and has a 90 degree turn lol.) Pretty sure most traffic and urban planners in KC went to JoCo community college.
You realize you can't even get on the south loop from downtown to go west? There are more problems than just getting down to 1 lane. And I don't see how they can add capacity without completely rebuilding the south loop and every bridge as it's constrained to the 3 lane wide trench so there is no room for merge lanes and you have the convention center supports to deal with too. (easily a billion dollar project with no funding)


Downtown with no highways would be nice, but we live in KC where 95% of the population doesn't live downtown and we have no subway/light rail to take people downtown. You can't remove the highways until there is an alternative way to get downtown or you are just going to make downtown less attractive for businesses than it already is. Build the light rail network first, then I would support reducing highway capacity into downtown.


want to spend a billion on infrastructure, build a light rail network to get people downtown, why waste a billion to upgrade the southloop just so you can remove the northloop just to free up a couple blocks for development or to have a billion dollar unused park? (it wont' get used, most downtown parks get little use now) It makes zero sense.
Last edited by dnweava on Fri Jun 08, 2018 9:48 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Capping the Loop

Post by flyingember »

dnweava wrote: You realize you can't even get on the south loop from downtown to go west?
This isn't true. The 10th St ramp on the east side of the loop is aligned with the ramp onto 670 WB

And that you didn't remember this shows how strange it is to have that as the only possible path
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Re: Capping the Loop

Post by dnweava »

flyingember wrote:
dnweava wrote: You realize you can't even get on the south loop from downtown to go west?
This isn't true. The 10th St ramp on the east side of the loop is aligned with the ramp onto 670 WB

And that you didn't remember this shows how strange it is to have that as the only possible path
The east loop is a deathtrap, no thanks. If I'm around main or broadway, I'm just going to go down 12th street viaduct and get on the west bottoms. There should be a way to get on 760 west from broadway.
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Re: Capping the Loop

Post by GRID »

dnweava wrote:
GRID wrote:The only real bottleneck on the south side of the loop is people coming from or going to the 670 viaduct because it narrows to one through lane. You fix that and you have massive capacity, especially going to KCK where 670 is wide open with no resistance.

The North Loop is just not needed. All it does is slow through traffic down. Run all the traffic through 670, fix the choke points and let it be a little congested during peak hours and everything will be fine.

Having said that. It really does not seem like the North Loop should even remotely be a priority and it's not a priority or they would't be rebuilding the Lewis and Clark Viaduct back to an interstate route. They are rebuilding all of that viaduct and yet the dumbest part of the entire thing is not being fixed (where the INTERSTATE narrows to one lane and has a 90 degree turn lol.) Pretty sure most traffic and urban planners in KC went to JoCo community college.
You realize you can't even get on the south loop from downtown to go west? There are more problems than just getting down to 1 lane. And I don't see how they can add capacity without completely rebuilding the south loop and every bridge as it's constrained to the 3 lane wide trench so there is no room for merge lanes and you have the convention center supports to deal with too. (easily a billion dollar project with no funding)


Downtown with no highways would be nice, but we live in KC where 95% of the population doesn't live downtown and we have no subway/light rail to take people downtown. You can't remove the highways until there is an alternative way to get downtown or you are just going to make downtown less attractive for businesses than it already is. Build the light rail network first, then I would support reducing highway capacity into downtown.


want to spend a billion on infrastructure, build a light rail network to get people downtown, why waste a billion to upgrade the southloop just so you can remove the northloop just to free up a couple blocks for development or to have a billion dollar unused park? (it wont' get used, most downtown parks get little use now) It makes zero sense.
670 should not have access in the downtown loop. God help downtown KC if they try to add on and off ramps, auxiliary lanes etc to the south loop like the North loop is. Downtown should not have 50 access points to the freeway system so that every single person that works downtown can be on the freeway in five seconds. That's the whole problem in the first place. Access to the freeway system from downtown streets needs to be reduced and consolidated to a couple of major exits away from the core of the downtown. You would likely have to do this by putting the exits for downtown away from downtown. Basically make ALL wb 70 traffic that needs to go downtown in the morning get off at a specific downtown exit that would exit before you ever enter the downtown loop. You would run all that traffic down major one way streets into and out of downtown like 11th and 12th and once they start to enter downtown, the traffic will distribute to smaller streets so you won't need a wide street in the heart of downtown. 71 traffic heading downtown should exit before downtown as well.

The downtown KCMO area has ZERO surface street traffic. None what so ever. Most streets are barely used at all. The busiest streets in greater downtown are barely busy during rush hour. KC actually needs more local traffic to be on the surface streets, not on the freeways.

What the hell would be the big deal to drive a few blocks east of the downtown loop to get on a proper ramp that takes you to WB 670. Downtown has got to get away from its historic, everybody has a freeway on ramp within a block of their parking garage.

I fully support removing the freeway from the north loop, but KCMO, KCK, MoDot and Kdot are so far from making that happen that it's just a pipe dream. Nobody is on the same page and KCMO is terrible at implementing any major urban planning projects. Also with so much of downtown still being parking lots, especially fronting the north loop, It just doesn't seem like a good investment when there are so many other infrastructure problems in KC. Hopefully they don't destroy downtown with the new Broadway bridge with all kinds of directional ramps etc. That bridge should be connected to city streets, instead they will try to make it part of the interstate system with high speed connections. Everybody is talking about removing the north loop while MOdot and Kdot are planning and doing the exact opposite.
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Re: Capping the Loop

Post by dnweava »

GRID wrote:
dnweava wrote:
GRID wrote:The only real bottleneck on the south side of the loop is people coming from or going to the 670 viaduct because it narrows to one through lane. You fix that and you have massive capacity, especially going to KCK where 670 is wide open with no resistance.

The North Loop is just not needed. All it does is slow through traffic down. Run all the traffic through 670, fix the choke points and let it be a little congested during peak hours and everything will be fine.

Having said that. It really does not seem like the North Loop should even remotely be a priority and it's not a priority or they would't be rebuilding the Lewis and Clark Viaduct back to an interstate route. They are rebuilding all of that viaduct and yet the dumbest part of the entire thing is not being fixed (where the INTERSTATE narrows to one lane and has a 90 degree turn lol.) Pretty sure most traffic and urban planners in KC went to JoCo community college.
You realize you can't even get on the south loop from downtown to go west? There are more problems than just getting down to 1 lane. And I don't see how they can add capacity without completely rebuilding the south loop and every bridge as it's constrained to the 3 lane wide trench so there is no room for merge lanes and you have the convention center supports to deal with too. (easily a billion dollar project with no funding)


Downtown with no highways would be nice, but we live in KC where 95% of the population doesn't live downtown and we have no subway/light rail to take people downtown. You can't remove the highways until there is an alternative way to get downtown or you are just going to make downtown less attractive for businesses than it already is. Build the light rail network first, then I would support reducing highway capacity into downtown.


want to spend a billion on infrastructure, build a light rail network to get people downtown, why waste a billion to upgrade the southloop just so you can remove the northloop just to free up a couple blocks for development or to have a billion dollar unused park? (it wont' get used, most downtown parks get little use now) It makes zero sense.
670 should not have access in the downtown loop. God help downtown KC if they try to add on and off ramps, auxiliary lanes etc to the south loop like the North loop is. Downtown should not have 50 access points to the freeway system so that every single person that works downtown can be on the freeway in five seconds. That's the whole problem in the first place. Access to the freeway system from downtown streets needs to be reduced and consolidated to a couple of major exits away from the core of the downtown. You would likely have to do this by putting the exits for downtown away from downtown. Basically make ALL wb 70 traffic that needs to go downtown in the morning get off at a specific downtown exit that would exit before you ever enter the downtown loop. You would run all that traffic down major one way streets into and out of downtown like 11th and 12th and once they start to enter downtown, the traffic will distribute to smaller streets so you won't need a wide street in the heart of downtown. 71 traffic heading downtown should exit before downtown as well.

The downtown KCMO area has ZERO surface street traffic. None what so ever. Most streets are barely used at all. The busiest streets in greater downtown are barely busy during rush hour. KC actually needs more local traffic to be on the surface streets, not on the freeways.

What the hell would be the big deal to drive a few blocks east of the downtown loop to get on a proper ramp that takes you to WB 670. Downtown has got to get away from its historic, everybody has a freeway on ramp within a block of their parking garage.
So instead of having the traffic spread around like it is now, you want downtown to function like the suburbs, highways only dump onto one street causing traffic backups while all the other streets are unused? I prefer our current model of spreading the traffic around.

And while traffic downtown is usually light, a road closure or two and it turns into gridlock. Close grand ave for the big 12 and that area turns into gridlock. Right now where 6th/grand are closed, walnut has turned into gridlock that doesn't move at rush hour. Just because it seems like we have more capacity than we need, in reality it doesn't take much to turn downtown into gridlock.

I have also wondered if a few strategically placed roundabouts downtown would help too.

I agree we could use less ramps but do it in a way that makes sense and spreads traffic out. 100,000 people work downtown, you can't have all those people exit at a single ramp unless you want the highways to back up to IKEA and arrowhead stadium every morning.
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Re: Capping the Loop

Post by GRID »

What I'm saying is that all through traffic should be routed through 670. The north loop should not have any through traffic. Most of the problems in downtown KC is with through traffic changes lanes all over the place to stay through and local traffic merging on and off at the same time. You could keep the north loop as a local traffic by turning it into a parkway system that distributes traffic into downtown at a slower pace with less of a footprint and in a manner that is more appealing to the neighborhood around it.

So if you were traveling north on 35, the only reason you would take the west loop and go that way was because your destination was somewhere downtown. all other traffic would route down 670.

If you were traveling on WB 70, it would make sense to build a high capacity exit just east of downtown so that traffic would not interact with all the through traffic that will be on the south and east sides of the loop. The area between the east loop and paseo will never develop anyway, may as well move most of your downtown freeway access to that area.

Broadway Bridge should just be Broadway. You want to go from the Northland to JoCo? Then use I-29 and the dedicated through lanes of the east and south loop or be ready for a few minutes of delay to drive through downtown streets instead to reach 35 south.

Most of the "congestion" downtown is caused by all this unnecessary merging, lane changes and freeway access points all where 7 major highways come together. It can be fixed though.
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Re: Capping the Loop

Post by earthling »

With KC growing and being a major freight center including truck traffic, is hard to imagine the S Loop handling all traffic, especially when it's not really even 3 full lanes each way with merging/lane switch mess. Seems best to keep N Loop for pass through and maybe take away some of the downtown access - cover it like a tunnel. Or make S Loop the pass through and keep N Loop downtown access - but still cap both. Need to think 20+ years out, not the current state of KC.
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