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ARMA —
Crawford County residents got their first glimpse of what the Arma Connection of the U.S. Highway 69 expansion project will look like during a public meeting Tuesday night at Northeast High School in Arma.
The funding is in place for the approximately 11-mile, $57.1 million Arma to Fort Scott upgradable expressway, but there is only money enough to complete the preliminary design phase of the Arma Connection, which runs from just north of the U.S. 69 and Kansas Highway 47 junction to 650th Ave. north of Arma. Kansas Department of Transportation officials said they hope to have a more accurate grasp of what the Arma Connection will cost within the next couple years so that they can complete the two projects at the same time.
“We hope to have at least half of the design completed by July 2014, KDOT Road Design Leader James Dietzel said. “The cost of construction is cheaper if you do it all at once than if you do it piece by piece by piece.”
The project is being funded by T-WORKS, a 10-year, $8 billion transportation program designed to create jobs, preserve highway infrastructure and provide multi-modal economic development opportunities across the state. Construction should begin in 2017 and could be complete by the end of 2019, officials said.
Leaders from surrounding communities have been working with KDOT officials to help plan how the road will be built, but officials wanted to show area residents their proposed plans and get feedback. Visitors got to see overhead views of what the expansion projects will look like and have questions answered.
The roads will be built as “upgradable expressways,” meaning that they will have four lanes but that access to the road from current roads will remain “at grade,” or at road level. If KDOT decides at some point that the road is too busy and can’t handle vehicles pulling directly onto it from a stop, it will upgrade the road, or parts of it, to a freeway. A four lane freeway differs from an expressway in that access is available only at interchanges, which utilize on and off ramps. The Fort Scott to Arma section, if converted to a freeway, would have interchanges at 680 Ave., 710 Ave. and Eagle Road. Other roads would be bypassed with an under or overpass, and some roads would be closed, with access by frontage roads connected to the interchanges.
Dietzel said residents won’t have to worry for a long time, though.
Crawford County residents got their first glimpse of what the Arma Connection of the U.S. Highway 69 expansion project will look like during a public meeting Tuesday night at Northeast High School in Arma.
The funding is in place for the approximately 11-mile, $57.1 million Arma to Fort Scott upgradable expressway, but there is only money enough to complete the preliminary design phase of the Arma Connection, which runs from just north of the U.S. 69 and Kansas Highway 47 junction to 650th Ave. north of Arma. Kansas Department of Transportation officials said they hope to have a more accurate grasp of what the Arma Connection will cost within the next couple years so that they can complete the two projects at the same time.
“We hope to have at least half of the design completed by July 2014, KDOT Road Design Leader James Dietzel said. “The cost of construction is cheaper if you do it all at once than if you do it piece by piece by piece.”
The project is being funded by T-WORKS, a 10-year, $8 billion transportation program designed to create jobs, preserve highway infrastructure and provide multi-modal economic development opportunities across the state. Construction should begin in 2017 and could be complete by the end of 2019, officials said.
Leaders from surrounding communities have been working with KDOT officials to help plan how the road will be built, but officials wanted to show area residents their proposed plans and get feedback. Visitors got to see overhead views of what the expansion projects will look like and have questions answered.
The roads will be built as “upgradable expressways,” meaning that they will have four lanes but that access to the road from current roads will remain “at grade,” or at road level. If KDOT decides at some point that the road is too busy and can’t handle vehicles pulling directly onto it from a stop, it will upgrade the road, or parts of it, to a freeway. A four lane freeway differs from an expressway in that access is available only at interchanges, which utilize on and off ramps. The Fort Scott to Arma section, if converted to a freeway, would have interchanges at 680 Ave., 710 Ave. and Eagle Road. Other roads would be bypassed with an under or overpass, and some roads would be closed, with access by frontage roads connected to the interchanges.
Dietzel said residents won’t have to worry for a long time, though.
“There probably won’t be enough traffic coming from side roads to warrant a freeway for at least 20 years, maybe even 30,” he said. “If we do have a hot spot for accident we’ll probably go back and take a look at that section. It will be a capacity generated response.”
Doug Parke, a designer with TransSystems, the company that is designing how the roads will be laid out, said he thinks it will be a while before the money to convert any part of the road to a freeway will be available.
“I don’t have the exact numbers, but it will cost significantly more,” Parke said.
Parke said feedback from people on a potential freeway has mostly been positive.
“People like the safety of a freeway, but when you have to drive further to the highway it can create a problem,” he said.
George Dockery, a representative of KDOT, said those residents won’t have much to worry about.
“In the immediate future, nothing will be much different,” he said.
