OFFICIAL - Buck O'Neil Bridge

[moderne]

Maybe in a state with a backlog of poor or failing bridges even getting 1 plain major bridge and several more small bridges is more important than 1 major that is more interesting.

[KC_Ari]

The state of MO ended up with a budget surplus, so I don't buy it. If there was strong will behind making it not the bare minimum, it could have been done.

[langosta]

The state of MO ended up with a budget surplus, so I don't buy it. If there was strong will behind making it not the bare minimum, it could have been done.

Did the gas tax end up with a large budget surplus? There are various different funds let alone the bridge is nearly done and todays budgetary environment plays no role in the budget and plan decisions of yesteryear.

[Belvidere]

I love it. I mean I can't say anything bad about it or I hate KC. This will be great for Downtown KC to have another major limited access freeway bypass!

Now commuters no longer have to even tap their brakes to fly past downtown. Just like all the other routes!

And the bridge itself is amazing. No airplanes can hit it! And it looks like the 435 bridges over the river too! Consistency is good!

Guys I think this is sarcasm!

Grid I just don't agree that forcing people to drive through downtown provides downtown with on iota of benefit. "feeling busier" isn't a benefit.

I was not talking about making downtown busier and I think you know that. I have never proposed routing highway traffic onto downtown city streets just to make downtown feel busier. I have only stated that because there are not really any through streets (not highways, but streets), there is little traffic.

I'll go back to Denver as an example again. You can get go from any neighborhood on any side of downtown Denver to the other side of downtown Denver on surface streets and most of the time it's faster. I'm not talking about people going from DEN airport to Golden, but people traveling in the downtown area. That's not the case in KC with the geography and the highways and the fact that downtown KC is more surrounded by industry (or what was once industry) than dense urban neighborhoods. Only to the east is there a sizeable attached neighborhood. Even then people use highways to go from west bottoms to river market or Old NE to Crossroads or West side to Columbus park. It's ridiculous.

My idea all along was to discourage through traffic from wanting to use 169 and Broadway. Make it harder to use the Broadway bridge if you are just using it for a bypass. If you are coming from KCI or the northland, using the actual interstate system is barely any additional time.

Don't even have a connection to the north loop at all. People will learn it will be faster to take 29 or even Route 9 vs driving through downtown to get back on 35 south or SW Trafficway. Then you use the Broadway Bridge for traffic who's destination is downtown. You get rid of the little back ups that happen at Broadway and the North loop. You bring everything in that area down to more of a pedestrian scale. People can then take the Downtown Route mostly for going into the city, not for the one minute shortcut to 35 south.

And then you design, fund and build a bridge that is exciting and a destination within itself. Light it up, make in an architectural addition to the city. Tie the new bridge to Berkley Park by building a connection along the river and making it part of the new bridge project.

Making 169 another interstate through downtown was totally unnecessary and was terrible urban planning. And then building a cheap off the shelf girder bridge for one of Downtown's grand entry points just makes it even worse.

The city and the state dropped the ball pretty bad here.

Thanks for going into detail. I don't know how we get to that vision at this point. I don't know if they will ever prioritize North Loop removal which may be the catalyst something like this or if it's too late.

[KCPowercat]

I love it. I mean I can't say anything bad about it or I hate KC. This will be great for Downtown KC to have another major limited access freeway bypass!

Now commuters no longer have to even tap their brakes to fly past downtown. Just like all the other routes!

And the bridge itself is amazing. No airplanes can hit it! And it looks like the 435 bridges over the river too! Consistency is good!

Guys I think this is sarcasm!

Grid I just don't agree that forcing people to drive through downtown provides downtown with on iota of benefit. "feeling busier" isn't a benefit.

I was not talking about making downtown busier and I think you know that. I have never proposed routing highway traffic onto downtown city streets just to make downtown feel busier. I have only stated that because there are not really any through streets (not highways, but streets), there is little traffic.

I'll go back to Denver as an example again. You can get go from any neighborhood on any side of downtown Denver to the other side of downtown Denver on surface streets and most of the time it's faster. I'm not talking about people going from DEN airport to Golden, but people traveling in the downtown area. That's not the case in KC with the geography and the highways and the fact that downtown KC is more surrounded by industry (or what was once industry) than dense urban neighborhoods. Only to the east is there a sizeable attached neighborhood. Even then people use highways to go from west bottoms to river market or Old NE to Crossroads or West side to Columbus park. It's ridiculous.

My idea all along was to discourage through traffic from wanting to use 169 and Broadway. Make it harder to use the Broadway bridge if you are just using it for a bypass. If you are coming from KCI or the northland, using the actual interstate system is barely any additional time.

Don't even have a connection to the north loop at all. People will learn it will be faster to take 29 or even Route 9 vs driving through downtown to get back on 35 south or SW Trafficway. Then you use the Broadway Bridge for traffic who's destination is downtown. You get rid of the little back ups that happen at Broadway and the North loop. You bring everything in that area down to more of a pedestrian scale. People can then take the Downtown Route mostly for going into the city, not for the one minute shortcut to 35 south.

And then you design, fund and build a bridge that is exciting and a destination within itself. Light it up, make in an architectural addition to the city. Tie the new bridge to Berkley Park by building a connection along the river and making it part of the new bridge project.

Making 169 another interstate through downtown was totally unnecessary and was terrible urban planning. And then building a cheap off the shelf girder bridge for one of Downtown's grand entry points just makes it even worse.

The city and the state dropped the ball pretty bad here.

I still don't really understand if we are building a river bridge why shouldn't we build it to handle some through traffic not wanting to go downtown rather around it? This is opening up a chance to remove the HOA as a primary river crossing for this same traffic ( you can see all the time HOA traffic backing up to go east loop)

It's not urban planning at question here,. Traffic going around downtown needs to be handled and this was step one of making it better. It's not going away.

[alejandro46]

Thanks for going into detail. I don't know how we get to that vision at this point. I don't know if they will ever prioritize North Loop removal which may be the catalyst something like this or if it's too late.

I mean its never too late to do something it just gets more expensive or delayed. I remember going to the Beyond the Loop and new Buck bridge meetings and at least I submitted my input that the north loop removal option needed to be preserved, and I know others did too. A few other proposals MODOT had were awful interchanges that would have resulted in more demolition & making it even harder to remove that north loop.

KS/KCK is probably the biggest obstacle beyond just the funding though for North Loop removal, as I think they'd need to approve it because I-70 access impacts them and KDOT extremely dumbly spent a crap ton of money rebuilding the Lewis and Clark Viaduct.

[dukuboy1]

I love it. I mean I can't say anything bad about it or I hate KC. This will be great for Downtown KC to have another major limited access freeway bypass!

Now commuters no longer have to even tap their brakes to fly past downtown. Just like all the other routes!

And the bridge itself is amazing. No airplanes can hit it! And it looks like the 435 bridges over the river too! Consistency is good!

Guys I think this is sarcasm!

Grid I just don't agree that forcing people to drive through downtown provides downtown with on iota of benefit. "feeling busier" isn't a benefit.

I was not talking about making downtown busier and I think you know that. I have never proposed routing highway traffic onto downtown city streets just to make downtown feel busier. I have only stated that because there are not really any through streets (not highways, but streets), there is little traffic.

I'll go back to Denver as an example again. You can get go from any neighborhood on any side of downtown Denver to the other side of downtown Denver on surface streets and most of the time it's faster. I'm not talking about people going from DEN airport to Golden, but people traveling in the downtown area. That's not the case in KC with the geography and the highways and the fact that downtown KC is more surrounded by industry (or what was once industry) than dense urban neighborhoods. Only to the east is there a sizeable attached neighborhood. Even then people use highways to go from west bottoms to river market or Old NE to Crossroads or West side to Columbus park. It's ridiculous.

My idea all along was to discourage through traffic from wanting to use 169 and Broadway. Make it harder to use the Broadway bridge if you are just using it for a bypass. If you are coming from KCI or the northland, using the actual interstate system is barely any additional time.

Don't even have a connection to the north loop at all. People will learn it will be faster to take 29 or even Route 9 vs driving through downtown to get back on 35 south or SW Trafficway. Then you use the Broadway Bridge for traffic who's destination is downtown. You get rid of the little back ups that happen at Broadway and the North loop. You bring everything in that area down to more of a pedestrian scale. People can then take the Downtown Route mostly for going into the city, not for the one minute shortcut to 35 south.

And then you design, fund and build a bridge that is exciting and a destination within itself. Light it up, make in an architectural addition to the city. Tie the new bridge to Berkley Park by building a connection along the river and making it part of the new bridge project.

Making 169 another interstate through downtown was totally unnecessary and was terrible urban planning. And then building a cheap off the shelf girder bridge for one of Downtown's grand entry points just makes it even worse.

The city and the state dropped the ball pretty bad here.

agreed the design for the new BOB is lame beyond belief. But they can't even light up the Bond Bridge which has some design aesthetics to it. Basically MODOT is a joke and I wish the city had a mix of private & public funding to be able to illuminate our bridges as well have more input into design & execution in the future.

[GRID]

I think I prefer having saved the costs of building a trophy bridge.

It's not just about being a "trophy" bridge, it's about building a bridge more fitting for the urban environment it's in. And yeah, that generally will include a more architecturally interesting bridge, but a bridge that is also much more integrated into the recreation and pedestrian infrastructure of the city.

I do not understand why people that live in downtown KC MO would support how this bridge was designed and built. Doesn't downtown KC have enough flyover over ramps and commuter bridges? Why this bridge was 95% designed for people to get to and from 169 to I-35 instead of for people that want to live in or enjoy downtown KC, I have no idea.

And any thought of the north loop going away is many decades out. By that time, this new bridge will be going through a renovation. Regardless, interstate traffic should not be routed on the west loop at all and this new design will put more traffic on the west loop.

Something like this with no connection to the highway system at all would have been better for downtown. The bridge would not need the additional flyover ramps and could have been designed to come into the street grid of the river market creating several new gridded blocks to the west of Broadway that is now highway infrastructure.

Tie the bridge's bike and pedestrian lanes to new improvements on the riverfront parks system (on both sides of the river.) Could connect the bridge to a dedicated bike trail around MKC like they have here at BWI on one side and the other side build a levee trail that would connect all the way to the One NKC development cycle track. Then of course connect the south side of the bridge to Berkley Park and the Trail that follows the Lewis and Clark Viaduct to Kaw Point and on to the Rock Island Bridge.

[GRID]

FYI, Modot just put up a new update video on the bridge.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9TqmF6_uf_4

[KCPowercat]

I think I prefer having saved the costs of building a trophy bridge.

I do not understand why people that live in downtown KC MO would support how this bridge was designed and built. Doesn't downtown KC have enough flyover over ramps and commuter bridges? Why this bridge was 95% designed for people to get to and from 169 to I-35 instead of for people that want to live in or enjoy downtown KC, I have no idea.

We weren't given a choice. Of course the design of the bridge isn't great, we all get that. We're trying to make the best of it.

Tie the bridge's bike and pedestrian lanes to new improvements on the riverfront parks system (on both sides of the river.) Could connect the bridge to a dedicated bike trail around MKC like they have here at BWI on one side and the other side build a levee trail that would connect all the way to the One NKC development cycle track. Then of course connect the south side of the bridge to Berkley Park and the Trail that follows the Lewis and Clark Viaduct to Kaw Point and on to the Rock Island Bridge.

Bike/Ped will be tied to both of those things.

[alejandro46]

FYI public opinion was weighted heavily towards direct I-35 connection. Not saying it’s right, but you can’t just hang everything MODOT (even though they deserve a lot of it).

Remember we almost got a repair/bandaid of the existing bridge except MARC/KC region stepped in and provided funding.

[KCPowercat]

I have no problem with the direct connection to 35 versus the stoplight backup that was happening. I still say the bridge connections were done right, the design is what we got no input into

[GRID]

I have no problem with the direct connection to 35 versus the stoplight backup that was happening. I still say the bridge connections were done right, the design is what we got no input into

You are not understanding. Take away all access to 169 from the north loop and those traffic problems go away.

Even the existing ramps need to go away. The access is the problem, not the traffic.

I wish I had some traffic animation software to plug it into and show you, but that's no longer my line of work.

The seven lane Heart of American Bridge (they already took one lane away for the bike lane) carries 18k vehicles a day. That is NOTHING. Way below its capacity. That bridge should also be removed from having access to the north loop. Any "traffic" there only exists because of 200 foot merges and lane changes. People that come from the HoA Bridge that get onto the north loop have to merge and or change multiple lanes instantly.

Even the Bond Bridge is not that busy with barely over 100k cars. Any backups to and from that bridge are caused by the the stupidity going on in the Downtown loop. The North loops needs to go away (or become a local street) and the east loop needs to be widened/capped and exits need to be removed. The west loop also needs to go away.

Most traffic coming from the Bond Bridge who's destination is downtown should exit Paseo and then go west into Downtown on any of the nearly unused east/west streets. There is no need to have an exit every other block on the loop.

Both 169 and 9 should be local downtown bridges that would be out of the way to use to go around downtown. 9 could be downgraded to to four lanes to accommodate more room for bikes and pedestrians.

670 can handle the traffic. It's 8 lanes wide. It will be busy, but widening 670 would not help. And it was not just Kdot that rebuilt the Lewis & Clark Viaduct, MoDot did their side too. And that should say something. That was a colossal waste of money a 6-8 lane elevated viaduct that carries 1/3 of its capacity. Especially when you have another elevated interstate viaduct a mile away that also carries 1/3 of its capacity.

All through town I-70 traffic should be routed to 670 and the 670 name removed. They could have kept one of the bridges on Lewis and Clark for a local viaduct that would connect to a whatever replaces the north loop. (likely a parkway of some sort). Fairfax and downtown KCK would still have access via the exiting north/south segment of 70 from the existing 670 viaduct.

Modot and Kdot have no fucking idea what they are doing. They are both literally still stuck in 1955 when it comes to urban highway design. Just put ramps, highways and exits everywhere.

[GRID]

It would help if KC area leaders could to stand up to MoDot. Modot continues to shit all over KC when compared to what they do in StL. In KC, MoDot can't afford to do anything. It's super bare minimum and then they don't maintain things after they build them. In St Louis you would think they have a completely different highway department.

The Bond Bridge carries two interstates through downtown KC and should have been built to accommodate that traffic. It should have at least four lanes in each direction, if not five to get it through 50 years. The bond bridge is basically six lanes with one axillary lane.

The 64 bridge over the MO river in the suburbs carries less traffic than the bond bridge and it's now 8 lanes wide with a dedicated pedestrian bridge.

The Page Ave Bridge (364) is ten lanes wide and also has a dedicated pedestrian bridge and carries half the traffic the Bond Bridge does.

370 is six lanes and carries half the traffic the Bond bridge carries.

70 over the MO in StL is ten lanes and carries about 30% more traffic than the Bond bridge.

So why did MoDot think think a brand new interstate bridge built recently connecting to the fast growing northland should only be six lanes? And why didn't Modot rebuild the east loop as part of the Bond Bridge project? I mean they are about to rebuild 64 again in St Louis City while they have done nothing but put band-aids on I-70 in KCMO.

MoDot could have done a better job with the new Broadway Bridge if they wanted to.

[TheLastGentleman]

KC leaders should stand up to MODOT eminent domaining chunks of downtown. KC leaders should NOT be asking for more lanes to induce more traffic and eat more urban land

[GRID]

KC leaders should stand up to MODOT eminent domaining chunks of downtown. KC leaders should NOT be asking for more lanes to induce more traffic and eat more urban land

Downtown KC has several interstates going through it. So you have no choice but to make it work and the best way to make it work is to concentrate the interstate traffic into specific corridors vs the current way of having highways everywhere. Think I-25 near downtown Denver. It's a big highway, but it's not looping all over downtown Denver.

You can widen and fix the east loop using existing right of way (or less) and a slightly wider Bond Bridge would have little impact. And fixing the east loop could actually make downtown better because you would remove the exits and build a tight highway with retaining walls and maybe even a deck it vs the current massive footprint of the highway today.

Then you give back the dozens and dozens of acres of land that are currently in use for the interstate and state highway system in and around the downtown loop. The north loop and all its exits, the west loop and its exits etc. But in order to do that, a wider Bond Bridge is likely needed, but then again, maybe not if the east loop was properly rebuilt.

[KCPowercat]

Grid you know I trust your opinion on these topics and what you describe sounds great. I also know that was not the scenarios given and I totally understand it was probably dumb modot but we had to live in their realty on this.

What they did tell us and sounds like meshes with your post is HOA could be disconnected from highway access but we were told that's only possible with this new buck bridge doing what it is now going to do. When a lot of downtowns goal was some level of reduction of the north loop and reduction in 9 highway to help connect river market to Columbus park, this was the lesser evil.

[KCPowercat]

Heard rave reviews from the few people that have used the new bridge.

[moderne]

Road deck has been removed from the north arch of old bridge. Superstructure should be coming down soon. Still no takers to recycle? Probably will get melted down.

[KCPowercat]

City Manager alluded to them trying to use it over the 670 cap.