Imagine if it had been designed according to a 1947 master plan completed by KCMO. I took some screen shots to try and give you some idea of the geography of the plan compared to today.
The picture below shows the northwest corner of the loop at 5th and Broadway. The blue arrow at the top is where the Broadway Bridge crosses the river. At the time of this plan however, there was no Broadway Bridge and vehicles traveled on the Hannibal Bridge upper deck. The purple arrow shows the location of Broadway and where a northbound tunnel was to be located as part of the west part of the freeway loop. The green arrow shows Washington Street where the southbound tunnel for the west freeway loop was going to be constructed. The red arrow shows current I-70 and the Intercity Viaduct. The blue arrow in the lower left is where Beardsley Road and current day I-35 are located.
The first original idea for the Paseo Bridge connection to downtown combined the new freeway with the interchange where the ASB (replaced with Heart of America) bridge connected to Independence Avenue. I guess this was to make 100% sure the Columbus Park voting block was decimated. The blue arrow shows the Paseo Bridge freeway connection, the red arrow the ASB/HOA/Route 9 connection, the purple arrow the north freeway loop/I-70, and the green arrow the east freeway loop.
What's interesting about this drawing is the tunnel (magenta arrow) along Oak Street that would put traffic under a couple of east-west streets to get to the ASB.
Not to be outdone with a 5 legged freeway interchange, the interchange of I-70 and US 71/Bruce Watkins Drive was some type of super compressed cloverleaf. The purple arrow is the east freeway loop, red arrow is south freeway loop/I-670, and blue arrow is US 71/Bruce Watkins Drive. I highlighted Grand Avenue in green to show the tight interchange that was to serve the south part of downtown.
Lastly, the I-670/I-35 interchange looked somewhat reasonable compared to the others. The west freeway loop tunnel under Broadway/Washington is shown with the green arrow, I-35 shown is shown with the blue arrow, and the south freeway loop/I-670 is shown with the red arrow. Grand is shown with the purple arrow just to give you context to the map above. The red arrow is where the Bartle Hall Ballroom Expansion sits over I-670.
Download and zoom in on the whole plan and what downtown was like by downloading the PDF below.
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