I hear things are a brewing about rail to the airport again so I thought I would finally find some time to share the original 1968 Kansas City "Concept of a Rapid Transit System" study that started it all. What's interesting is how the traffic projections along I-29 were rather large for people going to the airport.
What's interesting is they studied three ways to get from downtown to the Airport. I have always maintained that the only way rail ever goes to the airport is if it also provides a financially viable freight purpose and the study had the same idea I had, to build a line west of I-435 to the west side of the airport (yellow). In this situation, a Chicago suburb style "Metra" line could run along the existing freight tracks and stop in Riverside, Parkville, and then the airport while also opening the west side of KCI to industrial development which would pay freight service fees to help pay the maintenance costs. However our grandparents selected line followed the Kansas City to St. Joseph Interurban Railroad corridor which is essentially gone to development now (orange).
The study called out some subway concepts.
The study also planned on using the Hannibal Bridge road deck for busses to get across the Missouri River and also an elevated section to make the climb up to downtown. The passenger rail would use the existing rail lines.
The study had a "Jetson's" like monorail for the train to use. Note, the Jetson's was a GenX cartoon but not with the cool drinking, smoking, and gunfire that Looney Toons had with Yosemite Sam and Bugs Bunny which is why it's not still popular.
The rail line would have terminated just north of what eventually became the north side of Bartle Hall. The Missouri River and north are to the left and the West Bottoms is to the bottom of the picture.
The study called for a freeway for busses that was elevated downtown.
Study has some old pictures of downtown.
The study had a look at the plan and profile of how to get from the Hannibal Bridge, over 169, then along the Wheeler Airport and Missouri River. North is to the right, the airport is to the top of the picture, and the Missouri River is on the left.
Next picture is along the river and levee highway north of the airport. When the other two lanes (southbound) were built for the US 169 freeway, a bridge was built, not earthen fill. This study proposed earthen fill and the rail being between the highway and the river. Why didn't they do this or why did they do a bridge? No idea but just guessing that fill along the Missouri River creates a huge landslide risk because when soil is saturated with water, it loses some of its internal friction and has a higher risk of sliding down.
I found this concept of a transit freeway and future system with renderings interesting. I'm not sure of the location the rendering without reading the entire chapter.
More renderings showing what the elevated rail would look like.
Station rendering with Transworld Airlines logo in the forefront.
The next part of the study had a lot of the meat and description of the concept.
Some cool pictures of the abandoned Interurban Railroad bed. If you're interested, I've got some other ones to take a look at later because the Interurban has it's own tag with all my posts about it.
The study then went into the proposed alignment on 1960's aerial. In this picture, north is to the right. The orange line on the left starts where MO 9 goes behind the Red X (and you can see part of the old Riverside drive in which used to be a racetrack). I-635 is the highway going from upper left to lower right with Houston Lake in the lower right hand corner.
Next panel the I-29/635 interchange is in the upper left and north is to the right. The proposed alignment cut basically through the Sunpointe Village subdivision north of 56th Street and was on the west side of Line Creek in the hills above the Line Creek Trail. Interesting note NW 64th Street is labeled Potts Road and AA/Waukomis is labeled Deister Road. The alignment would be on top of the Line Creek Trail where it was built north of the Line Creek Community Center access point.
The alignment crosses over Milton Road (NW 68th Street) at the Line Creek crossing and the hops on top of the old Interurban Railroad. It crosses over Drennon Lake which you can read more about here. Why was NW 68th Street called Milton Road??? Well because it was how you got to Milton.
Alignment continues to follow the Interurban. On the right of the photo would be the Tiffany Greens area.
Here it cuts through Tiffany Greens. Northwest Road is the abandoned Old Stagecoach Road. Markwell Road is NW 108th Street. I have no idea where that name came from.
Alignment follows the Interurban and where it curves down would be right at the old Harley plant and along North Congress. It then took a hook to the west and curved to follow US 71 Bypass which is Cookingham Drive. You can see where 71 Bypass and other old US routes were located in the 1930's here.
In this map, north is on the bottom, west is on the right, and I-29 hadn't been built. The Red Crown Tavern was still in this aerial and you can look at a better aerial of the Red Crown Tavern here.
It stopped at the not yet built KCI which you can see some grading in the aerial. In this picture, north is to the bottom and west is to the right.
The air traveler origin and destination study matches what happens now. Roughly half of people going to KCI come from Kansas and so any rail system to the airport won't serve those customers.
Next they did a huge rendering of commercial and industrial development. I-435 is on the left, MO 152 in lower part, and 29 goes from top to bottom.
Lastly this below looks like a master plan with land use. North is the top and west is the left. Of interesting note here is an extension of MO 152 west towards MO 45 near Farley. Why this wasn't built to serve Leavenworth military facilities I'll never understand. Note the proposed railroad from the BNSF line near Farley up to the north side of the airport where I-435 and I-29 meet south of Platte City.
Download the whole report here.
Download 1968_KansasCity_Light_Rail_Airport_Study-compressed
Comments