Closing Grand all the time is stupid.

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GRID
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Re: Closing Grand all the time is stupid.

Post by GRID »

StrangerThings wrote:^ They try to get it back open after egress as quickly as possible. When they close it for a concert, it’s usually 6pm-11ishpm. They try to wait until after rush hour to close it when possible. Weekends are a bit different.

We’ve discovered over the years that 90% of our customers come in via the west side of the block or up an elevator from the parking garage. Only customers who typically enter on the grand side are ride share drop offs or pedestrian traffic.

When Cordish closes grand, it’s on a Saturday and is closed very early for setup but back open by 8pm at the very latest. Like I’ve said, it was two or three times last year and will be under 10 times this year.

We always keep access to parking garages open but you’re right, it can be confusing for suburbanites to navigate when Grand is closed. I’ve begged for better and obvious directional signage, but I’ve been denied.
It still just doesn't make sense to me. You don't need to close a major street in downtown, especially during times when everybody is in the arena and nothing is happening on Grand like a festival or something. Is this a downtown or an elementary school? Does everybdoy really need their hands held when crossing an urban street? (Grand does need a big crosswalk between Sprint and P&L). I would think when things are going on downtown, you would actually want Grand open, otherwise you are pushing at lot of extra traffic onto Main Street which I'm sure would drastically slow the streetcar.

Whatever I guess. I don't run the show. It's just my opinion.
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KCPowercat
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Re: Closing Grand all the time is stupid.

Post by KCPowercat »

Poor street design is the culprit of pedestrian danger....not opening and closing of a street.

This is from someone who actually walks outside of the p&l district and uses transit....unlike those making decisions within cordish and aeg and city hall.
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GRID
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Re: Closing Grand all the time is stupid.

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KCPowercat wrote:Poor street design is the culprit of pedestrian danger....not opening and closing of a street.

This is from someone who actually walks outside of the p&l district and uses transit....unlike those making decisions within cordish and aeg and city hall.
Didn't they re-route most of the bus routes down Grand? Didn't they straighten the MAX line and run it down Grand? The closings do seem really disruptive to transit.
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Re: Closing Grand all the time is stupid.

Post by normalthings »

StrangerThings wrote:
KCPowercat wrote:Poor street design is the culprit of pedestrian danger....not opening and closing of a street.

This is from someone who actually walks outside of the p&l district and uses transit....unlike those making decisions within cordish and aeg and city hall.
You do understand these decisions are well thought out don’t you? Money is spent on studies, opinions are heard and considered. I can guarantee you I spend more time watching how these traffic patterns are affected when we close down streets.

Have you seen a pedestrian hit by a drunk driver after a concert let’s out? Have you seen a tour bus have it’s windows shattered because it was hit by a drunk driver? Have you seen people blantenly ignore a traffic cops commands because they’re in a hurry? Have you seen how little kids run away from their parents while crossing the street to head into the sprint center? These are all things I’ve witnessed, but by all means, let’s not distrust the bus routes during off peak hours until something bad happens!

I walk outside of the district and utilize public transit multiple times a week via the streetcar. To create convenience for some, you’ll likely create inconvenience for others.

At 6pm today, I’m going to go hang out by one of the grand/13th bus stops and see what kind of ridership numbers they have. I’m sure these statistics are available somewhere as well.

I’m always down right flabbergasted when people just assume a couple of guys are sitting around making these decisions strictly in their own self interest.

I’m a sucker for punishment I guess, I’ve tried explaining the “why” of this original topic but it sounds like a few of you are pretty much against anything happening that will impact traffic and public transportation.

I think the American Heart Association is shutting down grand and other streets this spring for a walk/run. Those bastards!
You can't convert them all. Sometimes(usually) its best to just walk a way after giving them the facts. There is always a small minority that will never change their opinion.
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GRID
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Re: Closing Grand all the time is stupid.

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For the record, I was only suggesting that Grand is closed too often for long periods of time when it doesn't seem justified. I didn't say it shouldn't ever be closed at all. You even said yourself, it's closed for every event from 6 till 11 and you are closing it for nearly an entire weekend for a private event.

Again, I can see closing it an hour before and and hour after an event at Sprint at the very most. To me, even that seems extremely excessive. Capital One arena in DC is in a very urban location and is used almost every single night, it's much busier than Sprint Center with NBA and NHL teams and I don't think they ever really close streets. They have wide sidewalks. If they do close them, it's for like 20 minutes right after an event to till the sidewalks are safe to use.

It was just on observation. I think it sort of cuts off downtown KC when Grand is closed, forces traffic on other narrow streets, slows the streetcar, makes finding parking more difficult, make transit less predictable and user friendly etc. If you guys don't think so, then I guess it's all good.
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Re: Closing Grand all the time is stupid.

Post by normalthings »

GRID wrote:For the record, I was only suggesting that Grand is closed too often for long periods of time when it doesn't seem justified. I didn't say it shouldn't ever be closed at all. You even said yourself, it's closed for every event from 6 till 11 and you are closing it for nearly an entire weekend for a private event.

Again, I can see closing it an hour before and and hour after an event at Sprint at the very most. To me, even that seems extremely excessive. Capital One arena in DC is in a very urban location and is used almost every single night, it's much busier than Sprint Center with NBA and NHL teams and I don't think they ever really close streets. They have wide sidewalks. If they do close them, it's for like 20 minutes right after an event to till the sidewalks are safe to use.

It was just on observation. I think it sort of cuts off downtown KC when Grand is closed, forces traffic on other narrow streets, slows the streetcar, makes finding parking more difficult, make transit less predictable and user friendly etc. If you guys don't think so, then I guess it's all good.
Sprint Center is closing it for the weekend. Stranger things is Cordish. Cordish is P and L. Sprint Center is Sprint Center.

D.C. Arena attracts many people who are experienced with such urban environments and thus know how to act. Sprint Center does not attract people who always know how to act. I also suspect the streets near D.C. Arena has more traffic and a lower speed than grand. We have little traffic so not as many people are affected by the closures. This also makes it pretty easy to get going fast on Grand.

Maybe a nice pedestrian bridge like the one in Millenium Park would help fix this. Maybe the answer is narrowing grand. Maybe the answer truly is to block the street off. Maybe this will go away once i70 is capped.
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Re: Closing Grand all the time is stupid.

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StrangerThings wrote:Capital One Arena also has an attached parking garage, the official parking garage for Sprint Center is below the KC Live block, thus the mass ingress and egress across Grand.

8-[
A very small percent of people use that garage. I go to events all the time at Cap One. People park all over in surrounding garages and many take metro. The sidewalks and streets in all directions are very busy, but quite safe. Traffic moves slow, sidewalks are wide and pedestrians signals work well and prioritize pedestrians over cars. It all works just fine.

Maybe calming Grand is a better answer than closing it.

Also, what is wrong with having very large crosswalks? A big crosswalk between Sprint and P&L would do a lot to slow and calm traffic on Grand.

Like these in Baltimore. Light Street and Pratt Streets are much busier than Grand ever will be with similar speeds.

https://www.google.com/maps/place/Balti ... 76.6121893
Last edited by GRID on Fri Apr 06, 2018 7:48 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: Closing Grand all the time is stupid.

Post by GRID »

ldai_phs wrote:
GRID wrote:For the record, I was only suggesting that Grand is closed too often for long periods of time when it doesn't seem justified. I didn't say it shouldn't ever be closed at all. You even said yourself, it's closed for every event from 6 till 11 and you are closing it for nearly an entire weekend for a private event.

Again, I can see closing it an hour before and and hour after an event at Sprint at the very most. To me, even that seems extremely excessive. Capital One arena in DC is in a very urban location and is used almost every single night, it's much busier than Sprint Center with NBA and NHL teams and I don't think they ever really close streets. They have wide sidewalks. If they do close them, it's for like 20 minutes right after an event to till the sidewalks are safe to use.

It was just on observation. I think it sort of cuts off downtown KC when Grand is closed, forces traffic on other narrow streets, slows the streetcar, makes finding parking more difficult, make transit less predictable and user friendly etc. If you guys don't think so, then I guess it's all good.
Sprint Center is closing it for the weekend. Stranger things is Cordish. Cordish is P and L. Sprint Center is Sprint Center.

D.C. Arena attracts many people who are experienced with such urban environments and thus know how to act. Sprint Center does not attract people who always know how to act. I also suspect the streets near D.C. Arena has more traffic and a lower speed than grand. We have little traffic so not as many people are affected by the closures. This also makes it pretty easy to get going fast on Grand.

Maybe a nice pedestrian bridge like the one in Millenium Park would help fix this. Maybe the answer is narrowing grand. Maybe the answer truly is to block the street off. Maybe this will go away once i70 is capped.
Didn't see your post before I posted, but I think I posted the same thing you did. Yeah, I think you could do something with grand to make it safer and (and probably way more attractive) to calm traffic rather than closing the road.
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Re: Closing Grand all the time is stupid.

Post by cityscape »

I just want to go on record as saying this is a "good problem to have". I do think Grand could have been better configured to support pedestrian traffic. I think one of the primary issues is the bollards. I know the city intended to have automated ones that were simple and quick to raise/lower, but we know that didn't work out. As I understand it now, the current bollards take a while to set up and have to be moved by forklift/pallet. If we had the automated ones, I could see it being easier for event staff to allow for Grand to be more open. As it is now, they're having to set them up an hour or so before the event and then don't take them down until after the event. Perhaps we could look into some better performing bollards that did allow for the initially envisioned design.
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Re: Closing Grand all the time is stupid.

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cityscape wrote:I just want to go on record as saying this is a "good problem to have". I do think Grand could have been better configured to support pedestrian traffic. I think one of the primary issues is the bollards. I know the city intended to have automated ones that were simple and quick to raise/lower, but we know that didn't work out. As I understand it now, the current bollards take a while to set up and have to be moved by forklift/pallet. If we had the automated ones, I could see it being easier for event staff to allow for Grand to be more open. As it is now, they're having to set them up an hour or so before the event and then don't take them down until after the event. Perhaps we could look into some better performing bollards that did allow for the initially envisioned design.
I don't know the whole story behind the bollards, but why don't they work as intended? Why is the manufacture of the bollards not making sure they work? They were probably quite expensive to install and they don't even use them anymore?
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Re: Closing Grand all the time is stupid.

Post by shinatoo »

I heard the first time they were used a truck rammed them a rendered them inoperable/unrepairable.
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Re: Closing Grand all the time is stupid.

Post by grovester »

Are you sure the originals weren't automatic? I remember the story that shinatoo posted.
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Re: Closing Grand all the time is stupid.

Post by mean »

I vaguely remember hearing something about the hydraulic ones not playing nice with cold weather / snow / road salt or something. Could have just been a silly rumor or I could be conflating it with something else though.
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Re: Closing Grand all the time is stupid.

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The crazy thing is I was blaming street design which cordish had no blame and ST goes off on a rant about how I'm beating up on cordish.

Dude.
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Re: Closing Grand all the time is stupid.

Post by cityscape »

mean wrote:I vaguely remember hearing something about the hydraulic ones not playing nice with cold weather / snow / road salt or something. Could have just been a silly rumor or I could be conflating it with something else though.
They were initially automatic, but apparently the Australian company didn't design them for cold weather climates and they failed miserably and the city ended up changing them out for the manually installed ones now.
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Re: Closing Grand all the time is stupid.

Post by KCPowercat »

Got it. I guess I land on grand is closed too often too and closing it for parties isn't my preferred situation. Many city decisions do not fsvor transit and the individual living downtown....I'm used to it.
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Re: Closing Grand all the time is stupid.

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Again I didn't post anything about cordish in that message.
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Re: Closing Grand all the time is stupid.

Post by KCPowercat »

In some situations....I guess I'm just trying to disconnect blaming cordish and just focusing on the closing of a major street... Which is what grid was trying to do in his first post.

I'm a huge cordish and p&l supporter so didn't want my posts to seem to be blaming them
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Re: Closing Grand all the time is stupid.

Post by cityscape »

Don't we want more pedestrians to be walking around comfortably downtown rather than catering to cars and drivers who have to slightly change their route? While I agree there are more efficient methods for closing Grand, I guess I just don't see this as a big or stupid problem.
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Re: Closing Grand all the time is stupid.

Post by KCLover »

Is Grand even considered a main thoroughfare anymore?
I thought with the road diet thing going on, the city was hoping to make it more pedestrian and bike friendly thus pushing autos to Broadway or Main.
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