The Line Creek Loudmouth

Big Shoal Creek Greenway Trail Ribbon Cutting Friday 10/29/21

Come celebrate the newest jewel in the KCMO trail system this Friday 10/29/21 at 2PM.  Event details here.

This nearly two mile trail activates the Big Shoal Greenway and is a collaborative effort from multiple KCMO departments and connects multiple neighborhoods in Gladstone and KCMO between Chouteau and Brighton.  Long story short, the water department installed a waterline along the greenway, the public works department secured $1.35M in federal bike/ped funds for a trail connecting Brighton and Chouteau, and the parks department used those funds to construct the trail along the tree cleared waterline corridor.  Truly a successful project for everyone and now you get to enjoy it.  The best place to access it is on North Indiana right around NE 55th Street where there is a new graded play field and trailhead parking lot. 

Map of the project below with the trail shown in blue.  It goes under both Indiana and Brighton in case you are wondering why there are curvy squiggles on the map.

I do have to warn you that there is a long and rather steep hill along Chouteau but that is what happens when building a trail in a fully developed area with floodplain and topographic challenges.  This is looking northeast from where it starts near Chouteau and you can see the cut that was needed to get the trail at an acceptable slope.  There is a gap in the trail south of here down towards NE 53rd Street as the developer for the old mall is supposed to construct the gap.

This is a 170 feet plus (I think, I don't remember as the plans were done 3 years ago) bridge spanning the floodplain.

It provides the newest IG or FB picture background in the area.  This is looking west back towards Chouteau.  I love seeing all of your trail bridge pictures.

This connection opens up the greenway.   Who says engineers can't design things that aren't straight.

The project has a low water crossing because the floodplain is large through here.  These are always great places for kids to play with sticks and rocks and the creek.  This is looking west back towards Chouteau.

There is a connection and crosswalk on North Indiana but the trail also has the option of going under.

You can enjoy some free artwork by local students.  I wish someone would paint a picture of B.A. Baracus....

This is a new parking lot/trailhead on the east side of Indiana.  There was a maybe 120' x 80' field graded out where there was unmanaged slope which could be used for practices or pickup soocer/frisbee/football and the baseball diamond fences were replaced.

This is looking west back at Indiana around a bend on the trail.  The trees you see were planted by the waterline project for mitigation of clearing and in anticipation of the the trail and have a few years of growth under their belt.

The picture below shows where the trail is right on top of the waterline clearing.  Note how the waterline construction had as minimal intrusion as possible and how the clearing opened up a perfect corridor for the trail.

 

This leads to another open area underneath some old growth trees.  When I was going through here, there was a young family on a blanket just enjoying being outside.

The trail then goes into an area which has never been maintained and has an amazing tree canopy with some old oaks and sycamores.

There is a stretch where the trail had to be straight because of property lines and to be away from the creek but the engineer was able to sneak a little curvature into the design.

The trail does cross Jackson at the street level because the Jackson bridge is short and there isn't clearance to go underneath.  This is another section which isn't flat but just so you know, when I was in a wheelchair post Achilles tendon surgery this summer, I did roll through the trail just to see how it felt from an ADA perspective.

The area between Jackson and Cypress was platted in the 1950's and there was a lake mentioned on the plat with Cypress as the dam.  I am assuming at some point it breached and someone dropped a metal culvert in place, paved over it, and called it good.  It's the only explanation for why there's a bridge at Jackson and downstream 500 feet at Cypress there's a metal pipe. It does get a little tight through here and sometimes one just has to roll with the constraints in the design like snaking between a property corner and a sewer manhole because the creek is just ten feet to the left of the trail.

I have a ton of pictures but I'm going to hop over to just east of Cypress where we have a low water box culvert crossing on the trail.  This is also where the trail goes onto a 40 (+/-?) park tract that has some amazing tree specimens that's never really been accessible to the public.

The trail is built on top of the waterline clearing and in a few years, the tree canopy will fill in and fully shade the trail.  This is looking east towards Brighton.

This is looking east towards Cypress.

The trail connects to the west side of Brighton where it uses the sidewalk on the bridge to cross over to the north and then loop around and underneath the trail.

I encourage you to come out Friday.  There are plenty of places and things money can be spent on so if you enjoy these trails, show up and thank your elected officials who provide the support for funding to implement them.  If you can't make it on Friday, check it out this weekend or the next as the trees start to show their colors.  Repeating the link to the event details again so you can put it on your calendar and enjoy.

Platte Purchase and Route 152 Interchange Status 10/26/21

Well it's been great construction season this fall with no rain and a long string of sunny days.  I took some pictures of the new diverging diamond interchange under construction at Platte Purchase and Route 152.  This project is being done in anticipation of the new Central Bank Sporting Complex, planned new Platte County R-3 school facilities, and commercial development.  The project will be under construction until the middle of next year but was closed to allow work to accelerate and have the off-ramps open before Thanksgiving.

This picture was taken from the the north side of the interchange and looking south from Platte Purchase at freshly poured and sawed concrete.

I thought the paving machine left an artsy path.  This shows the path for someone going south on Platte Purchase and how they will cross over to the "wrong side" of the road.

The gravel base has all been put in place and compacted.  This is looking southwest at the WB on-ramp which pavement is already completed.  The pipes sticking out of the ground are conduits for the traffic signals which take a while to get on the job site because there's a 4-6 month lead time on ordering and someone fabricating the metal poles.

This is looking east towards the WB off-ramp (ramp for those of you coming from Liberty or 169 to get to that large wholesale club) and the off-ramp pavement work is all done.  The wood stakes you see were placed by a surveyor to help set up a string line which the concrete paver uses to guide the curvature and elevation of the new pavement.

Since this is one of those diverging diamond (DDI) interchanges, this is looking south at the east side of the bridge approach where southbound traffic will be driving on the "wrong" side of the road.  I'll point out that the concrete contractor left the gap in the middle because they have to install steel bars along the concrete joint lines and by doing it this way, they can come in, drill and grout the steel bars in, then use the new pavement as the edge forms.  See the green bars sticking out?  Those are rust inhibiting material covering metal reinforcing bars.

This below is a concrete drill.  I haven't seen one of these in action but the hydraulic drill would drill two bar holes in what seemed like just under a minute.

I also took a shot of the concrete paver.  Basically it's an expensive "Play-Doh" machine that takes the concrete, shakes it up to get the air out of the concrete, and smashes it flat.

I noticed some pink markings on the bridge showing the location of the new concrete barriers that will keep cars on the right side of the road.  See all of the green rebar?  That all goes into making a concrete median barrier.  Ironworkers will grout the rebar into the existing bridge deck and then a concrete machine with a steel template will take the concrete from a concrete truck and slither it into the form.  Concrete is simply heavier "Play Doh" and the physics is the same.

Now I have made it to the south side of the bridge and this is looking south at the southern cross over.

This is looking west at the eastbound off-ramp which has all of the concrete in place.

This is looking east at the eastbound on-ramp.  Again all of the ramp pavement is done.

The project also includes an underpass for the Route 152 Trail.  One of the problems with DDI interchanges is the number of bike/ped crossing points and vehicular conflicts.  They are set up for free-yielding traffic flow which is why they work so well where people are trying to get off and on a freeway.  They are set up for pedestrians continuing on an arterial street.  However, I can't think of DDI's that have been built where bike/ped users are crossing the arterial which is the case here so while the road is all torn up, it made sense to put in an underpass to eliminate any possibility of vehicular accidents on the free yielding merges and also not cause substantial delay in someone pushing a walk button to cross and causing all the cars to have to wait at the stoplights.  The grade of the trail and the interchange being much higher than the surrounding ground worked well in this case.

I also saw an operator using a remote controlled dirt compactor.  A big problem in civil construction is settlement and it's always hard to get compaction of the soil placed to where it doesn't settle the pavement.  This is common right before bridges or over cross road pipes where the dirt isn't compacted to the right density and dips in the road develop.  Using a remote controlled compactor eliminates the chance of the operator getting squeezed and hurt or killed if the compactor happened to trap him/her against something immovable like a concrete box culvert.

This is a joint partnership project between Kansas City and MoDOT and I know it's hard to see progress from Route 152 or Platte Purchase so I just wanted to share what the project is looking like.  It will be nice when it's done.