Westport

[chaglang]

There are two parts to the project: the removal of stop lights at Westport & Penn and Westport & Mill. That AFAIK, will be done by the city. The Mill Street road diet/restriping will be done by volunteers with their own equipment, i.e., paint rollers.

[herrfrank]

You may have noticed that when you pull up to an all-way stop, after you gain the right of way you may either go straight, turn right, or turn left, as you wish. Unlike at a stop light, there is never an unbroken sequence of oncoming vehicles that hold the right of way, so you do not have to wait for a break in traffic to turn left. Consequently, cars behind you do not have to wait any longer on you to move through the intersection when you are turning than when you are going straight; thus a left-turn lane, which provides space for left-turning cars to loiter, waiting to turn, without blocking the flow of traffic proceeding straight through an intersection controlled by a traffic light, lack their basic purpose at an intersection controlled by all-way stops.

Indeed, all a left-turn lane does in this situation is allow left-turning traffic to jump to the front of the queue to move through the intersection, when there is one. Their very presence widens the roadway to no other benefit (if re-ordering the stopping queue can be called a benefit), a detriment to pedestrians, and because they make it possible for two cars coming from the same direction to pull up to the stop sign at about the same time, left-turn lanes cause needless confusion among both drivers and pedestrians about who has the right of way.

In other words, left-turn lanes at an all-way stop offer no meaningful benefits whatsoever, but they do carry some minor (but noticeable) disadvantages. No one would design an all-way stop from scratch with left turn lanes, and the only reason they will remain present on Westport Road, if they do, is because they are a left-over element of the formerly signalized intersections there, vestigial reminders that the people who design the public spaces in this town rarely do it well.

And it already does cause problems here in Kansas City. The intersection of State Line Road at Tomahawk/ 63d Terrace was a stoplight at least since the 1960s. Made into a blinker (red all directions) in 2014, and removed completely last year. The four-way stop there has left-turn lanes (Mission Hills side) or spacing (KC side) on the minor street (Tomahawk) and no width for left-turn lanes on the major street (State Line Road).

This causes the frequent and strange problem of four cars bunched on Tomahawk against only two on State Line. Also seems to confuse left turners whether they have the right-of-way _in front of_ the through traffic from the opposite direction.

[pash]

.

[kboish]

There are two parts to the project: the removal of stop lights at Westport & Penn and Westport & Mill. That AFAIK, will be done by the city. The Mill Street road diet/restriping will be done by volunteers with their own equipment, i.e., paint rollers.

Interesting. I have a few re-striping projects in mind as well...time to buy some paint.

[WSPanic]

Are you still confused?

Never was.

[pash]

.

[grovester]

Lighten up Francis.

[pash]

.

[JBmidtown]

Any of you guys calls me Francis again, I'll kill ya.

Where's all the hate coming from Frankie?

[pash]

.

[chaglang]

Eventually, yes the goal is to build out with concrete. For now we will have to make do with paint and bollards. For what got done, the build was super easy. The double yellow line was done by using a 2x4 as a spacer and straight edge and looks pretty good. Traffic seemed to be adapting to the striping change without much confusion.

[pash]

.

[chaglang]

Gould Evans came up with a plan for a Mill St road diet about 10 years ago. At the time, the Westport Business League was on board, but the city wasn't. In the last year or so, the city did a traffic study to see if the stop lights at Mill/Westport and Pennsylvania/Westport could be replaced by stop signs. At that time, Gould Evans approached the city again to see if Mill could dieted. Troy Schulte was on board, and everyone was fine with volunteers doing the work. The materials were paid for by the WBL, and the volunteers were all from Gould Evans except for SMH and Eon Blue.

FWIW, I drove through Wesport last night to see how traffic was flowing through the stop signs. Traffic was moving really well. The only slowdown was from people sitting too long at the turn lanes at Pennsylvania. Those may have to come out.

[slimwhitman]

A new news video for the Mill Street painting project: http://www.kshb.com/news/local-news/wes ... -customers Volunteers in action.

[beautyfromashes]

The problem isn't with the roads, it's with the St. Luke's fortress of parking lots and blocked roads funneling all the traffic into one spot. You can't block every sub-entrance and exit to an area and complain that the only road left is too congested.

[DaveKCMO]

The problem isn't with the roads, it's with the St. Luke's fortress of parking lots and blocked roads funneling all the traffic into one spot. You can't block every sub-entrance and exit to an area and complain that the only road left is too congested.

this.

st. luke's has destroyed midtown connectivity.

[brewcrew1000]

The problem isn't with the roads, it's with the St. Luke's fortress of parking lots and blocked roads funneling all the traffic into one spot. You can't block every sub-entrance and exit to an area and complain that the only road left is too congested.

this.

st. luke's has destroyed midtown connectivity.

I agree
St Lukes would be ideal if it was East of Main or West of SW Trafficway. If St Lukes wasn't there I think you would have seen a lot of Hotels and most likely high rise apartments go into that location. Its a real hindrance in any kind of fluid vibrancy/density between Westport and the Plaza.

[pash]

.

[DaveKCMO]

I guess all we can do is sit around for six months and wait until the city will let us approve the streetcar expansion, then sit around for six years longer until the day that we can hop aboard a streetcar at the eastern edge of the Plaza and get off one stop later at Westport and Main. Finally we will have a halfway decent means of getting between two of the city's only pedestrian districts as a pedestrian, of at least from the edge of one to the edge of the other.

sad, but true. that project generated a massive shift in thinking at city hall. can't wait for it to be applied to midtown!

[chaglang]

Well said, Pash. I don't want to understate the impact of the streetcar, but the change in mindset at City Hall seems to be pretty limited if the topic isn't the streetcar itself. There's still a lack of understanding of what an urban development looks like. The value of the existing street grid is poorly understood. Bike/ped facilities are still absurdly difficult to implement because of a reluctance to make incremental improvements and a SOP of instead waiting years for a moonshot solution to be funded. Not to make this a catch-all whine, but it often feels like the city lacks the ability to take the success of the streetcar and use that knowledge to challenge other assumptions it makes about urban form. To me, the reaction to this Mill Street project ("They really let you do that!?" "How do I get that approved on X street?!") belies how little the city has changed in practice.