KCRag Forum

I swear if kcrag ran the city, every single “superfluous” element of the cityscape would be stripped down to nothing because it’s saving someone somewhere a few bucks. Guess they should’ve put a drop ceiling over the plaster ceiling in union station instead of restoring it. God knows how much money we wasted on that one!

TheLastGentleman wrote: ↑Thu Feb 25, 2021 11:10 pm I swear if kcrag ran the city, every single “superfluous” element of the cityscape would be stripped down to nothing because it’s saving someone somewhere a few bucks. Guess they should’ve put a drop ceiling over the plaster ceiling in union station instead of restoring it. God knows how much money we wasted on that one!

Quite the opposite. We'd have about 1000 super towers. We've regularly shot for the stars around here. To this specific item how much of the general fund do you this should go to annual maintenance of a pedestrian park Buck bridge?

Want to talk Union Station that kcrag was huge in pushing to get the bi-state approved, sure let's get a vote to help fund this idea, all for it.

TheLastGentleman wrote: ↑Thu Feb 25, 2021 11:10 pm I swear if kcrag ran the city, every single “superfluous” element of the cityscape would be stripped down to nothing because it’s saving someone somewhere a few bucks. Guess they should’ve put a drop ceiling over the plaster ceiling in union station instead of restoring it. God knows how much money we wasted on that one!

haha. That's KC in general. The slogan of KC should be. "We don't care if we don't impress you". As often as I have heard that said by locals.

Wait I thought everybody made fun of KC's huge inferiority complex that freaked out whenever anybody said one slightly negative thing about anything KC and everybody was too sensitive and wanted to impress everybody too much?

I'm so confused.

KCPowercat wrote: ↑Thu Feb 25, 2021 11:35 pm Wait I thought everybody made fun of KC's huge inferiority complex that freaked out whenever anybody said one slightly negative thing about anything KC and everybody was too sensitive and wanted to impress everybody too much?

I'm so confused.

Oh KC has an inferiority complex, but they don't like to spend money or change at the same time. I know! it's weird isn't it?

I will say that KC is still a VERY underrated city on a national scale. Even with the chiefs and royals recent success, nobody outside of KC knows a thing about the actual city.

It's actually easy to impress people with a first time visit to KC because they expect so much less than what the city actually offers, but that doesn't mean there are areas the city could improve.

The airport is one of them and it's finally getting improved for example. Even as basic as it will be.

dukuboy1 wrote: ↑Thu Feb 25, 2021 2:21 pm Is there anything that can be done to add some kind of aesthetics to bridge to give it some more design "pop" are architectural elements? I understand they are doing this on a shoestring budget and the FAA rules had to be adhered to. But is there anything that can be done to improve the cosmetics that are cost effect and give it a little something more? After this only the Bond Bridge will have any kind of design uniqueness to it. Surely with some of the world best architectural and engineering firms in the world located here someone can step up and add something. Even if they cover the costs as a donation to the city and thus turn it into a tax write off.

I did a mockup showing the Broadway approach moved a bit to the east that preserves the corner building, and adds some design to the bridge. The side spans would be painted light blue, and the blue bars across the top would be LED bands lit at night, with white up-lights on the light blue portion at night.

The bottom image is the one MDOT released.

so can those simple architectural elements be added to the bridge? I assume they serve no support functions, just aesthetics, which is fine. Anything to punch up the design a little. This bridge is the main entry way to to city for most of the people coming from the airport to downtown. They really need to make it a priority to create a nice welcome path so to speak. I know they added some elements years ago on the North & South ends on the Broadway EXT, those pillars with the LED lights that rarely work

Love to see something

I’m really struggling to understand how this project serves residents of KCMO. They’re essentially building two bridges in place of one and adding a direct connection to the highway and taking up very valuable urban land in the process. All to make it easier for residents of one satellite suburb (Northland) to get to an out-of-state satellite suburb (JoCo).

Why can’t they rehab the existing bridge and redo the approach? That has to be significantly cheaper. Who cares if they have to close the bridge for 2 years. There are two other bridges to cross the river in the meantime. What a giant waste of money!

kcmiz wrote: ↑Fri Feb 26, 2021 10:57 am I’m really struggling to understand how this project serves residents of KCMO. They’re essentially building two bridges in place of one and adding a direct connection to the highway and taking up very valuable urban land in the process. All to make it easier for Northland residents to get to JoCo.

Why can’t they rehab the existing bridge and redo the approach? That has to be significantly cheaper. Who cares if they have to close the bridge for 2 years. There are two other bridges to cross the river in the meantime. What a giant waste of money!

How do you redo the approaches for the existing bridge without tearing down buildings? Draw the straightest possible line from the end of the bridge that doesn't go through multiple buildings

You’re tearing down buildings under this plan anyway.

dukuboy1 wrote: ↑Fri Feb 26, 2021 10:53 am so can those simple architectural elements be added to the bridge? I assume they serve no support functions, just aesthetics, which is fine. Anything to punch up the design a little. This bridge is the main entry way to to city for most of the people coming from the airport to downtown. They really need to make it a priority to create a nice welcome path so to speak. I know they added some elements years ago on the North & South ends on the Broadway EXT, those pillars with the LED lights that rarely work

Love to see something

I'm sure Zahner could come up with some kind of curved aluminum design that is a design element and not structural.

I'm all for saving buildings but those buildings got exiled back when the loop was created, I'm honestly shocked they are even occupied at this point.

Since we're getting closer to the airport and the FAA height restrictions, I don't think we'll see much of any vertical elements added even if we had more cash. For the same reason I doubt we are able to add lighting elements above the bridge other than required streetlamps. Is there any fun under bridge elements that could be added?

Do the engineers at MoDOT live on Mars? The last thing downtown KC needs is more urban renewal highway flyovers.

I think the issue is they’re trying to make the new bridge both a highway and an urban arterial. It’s needs to be one or the other.

kcmiz wrote: ↑Fri Feb 26, 2021 11:07 am Do the engineers at MoDOT live on Mars? The last thing downtown KC needs is more urban renewal highway flyovers.

I think the issue is they’re trying to make the new bridge both a highway and an urban arterial. It’s needs to be one or the other.

Certainly more flyovers are bad but is is really worse than the status quo which is ~15,000 cars that have no reason to enter the downtown grid.

It's not functioning as a highway or urban arterial today and it's already serving as both.

Removing one function from the downtown grid is a huge improvement even if the bridge itself is not.


This is about opportunity cost, there's no chance this project was ever going to be perfect. It's a folly to have expected this.

Let's say the connection to downtown was removed. Is shifting all that traffic to 12th or Delaware an improvement? Is it ideal to impact the streetcar to have a better connection at Broadway?


Looking at just the bridge is a mistake, look at the network 10 blocks in any direction for the impact of the project.

I assume you’re talking about northbound cars taking the 6th St exit to then turn left onto the Broadway bridge. If that is a bottleneck, just remove the exit and force them onto north loop. There are two other river crossings at their disposal.

It's really sad to see. Why is it that highway architects think that our society values nothing above highways themselves? The north side of downtown has been savaged by these highways. We should be reducing highway real estate, not adding it. In my ideal world, 169 would veer to the west, following the river on the west side of the airport, cross the river just to the east of the state line, and meet up with 670 in one of those big obnoxious cloverleaf interchanges. The North and West loops would be removed, and 70's patently dangerous curvy journey to KCK would be eliminated, with the road just continuing via what is now 670.

But no, everybody has to have an expressway on their front porch.

This leads the way to subtraction by addition though.

bahua wrote: ↑Fri Feb 26, 2021 11:53 am It's really sad to see. Why is it that highway architects think that our society values nothing above highways themselves? The north side of downtown has been savaged by these highways. We should be reducing highway real estate, not adding it. In my ideal world, 169 would veer to the west, following the river on the west side of the airport, cross the river just to the east of the state line, and meet up with 670 in one of those big obnoxious cloverleaf interchanges. The North and West loops would be removed, and 70's patently dangerous curvy journey to KCK would be eliminated, with the road just continuing via what is now 670.

But no, everybody has to have an expressway on their front porch.

I get what you are saying but moving 169 to the west side of the airport is not an option. Talk about getting in the way of the airport. They just needed to make 169 transition into a city street and stop trying to make it an interstate, but everybody's main goal is to have it be an interstate. Because downtown KC needs eight instead of just seven high speed interstate type routes plowing through it.

GRID wrote: ↑Fri Feb 26, 2021 12:03 pm I get what you are saying but moving 169 to the west side of the airport is not an option. Talk about getting in the way of the airport. They just needed to make 169 transition into a city street and stop trying to make it an interstate, but everybody's main goal is to have it be an interstate. Because downtown KC needs eight instead of just seven high speed interstate type routes plowing through it. You know cause so many people work there.

I can get behind that. Even better, make it a city street to the airport, and then stop it. No sarcasm. There is a large, modern, designated highway going north already, and it's less than a mile away.