The Line Creek Loudmouth

1968 Kansas City Rail to the Airport Study

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

 

Development at 152 and Platte Purchase

After dropping $36M of public money into a pay to play sports complex it's nice to see some development happening at the Platte Purchase and 152 interchange.  I don't get that way much since the Green Hills Road project has changed my travel patterns but there are some things happening near Costco™.  On the northwest side of the interchange, a new Floor and Decor™ store is underway.  For reference here is the approved development plan location.

The development site looks like it's set up to have a gas station at the corner of the WB 152 off ramp in the lower right part of the map.  The flooring store is along 152 and will face Platte Purchase (purple highlight).  A coffee or small drive through is along the middle entrance off Platte Purchase and two restaurant like pad sites at the SEC of Platte Purchase and Fountain Hills Drive.  It has another large box store (probably grocery size tenant) facing to the north (yellow highlight).  The red lines in the map were from a preliminary submittal showing pedestrian pathways.

This is what it will look like from the south along 152.

This is what it will look like from the front towards Platte Purchase.

On the southeast side of 152 and Platte Purchase, if you've driven by you've seen lots of grading happening.  There is an apartment project being built that will be west of Platte Purchase between the YMCA Challenger Field and Pathfinder Elementary and Barry Middle Schools. The site map on aerial below is oriented with north on the right, Platte Purchase on the bottom, and the road in front of the schools on the left and top.

The plans shown to the City Plan Commission show that the apartments will generally look like this.

The clubhouse right off the entrance from Platte Purchase is supposed to look like this.

It looks like most of the rough grading is done and they have some footings for one of the buildings on the backside started so I wouldn't be surprised if they are done this time next year.  I think these apartments will be a hit.  You've got easy access to two schools, the very underrated Barry Platte Park, the Route 152 Trail with its access to everything and the Line Creek Trail, and the YMCA Challenger Field which I was at with my kids tonight.  That field is always open and we often wind up in a football pick up game with other kids and families.  It's a great park for everyone and we really need to thank Trent Green, Mark Teahen, Fred and Shirley Pryor, and the YMCA who raised a bunch of private money to build a park that all the public can use.

 

Waukomis Drive (soon to be Line Creek Parkway) Improvements Progress

For everyone complaining about the heat, you need to know this is perfect road building weather.  It's also supposed to be hot for a while but not hot enough to not vote next Tuesday so in case you missed my primary post this week, you can catch it here.

What a difference a bidding process and contractor make.   The reconstruction of Waukomis near Line Creek Elementary bid the same month as the North Green Hills Road improvements. What's really cool about this job is that the contractor, Radmacher Brothers, innovated out of necessity.  The design called for some large concrete arches for the two branches of Line Creek.  These concrete arches are usually built off site from far away and then trucked to the job site.  However, it's my understanding that the concrete arch makers were super busy so Radmacher decided to build their own arches on the job site.  If this works for them financially, it's a great way to save money and expedite construction and hopefully takes off in the local market.

They had to pour a flat concrete slab to put the forms together.  I had taken some pictures of the larger forms set up but can't find them but the green metal in the picture below are parts of the forms that they bolt together, place reinforcing steel bars inside of it, then pour concrete around it.

This is a picture of a finished one.  I don't remember the dimensions exactly but this has to be around the seventy feet length.

Now these things have to sit on a foundation and the point load from the edge of the arch has to be distributed over a flat concrete slab.  Concrete doesn't do well when it's stressed with tension (getting pulled apart).  It's great when it's in compression (getting squished).  The way concrete gets its tensile strength is steel reinforcing bars.  Now I'm not 100% sure if the picture below is for the footing for the arches or maybe the reinforcing steel they need for a poured retaining wall but either way here is the web of rebar the contractor had to build in order to make sure the concrete does what it's supposed to do.

So the south two thirds of the project is complete.  They are working on the north third and here is the footing for one side of the arches underway.

Now I need to do a post just about the old Kansas City to St. Joseph Interurban concrete arches that were built in 1910ish but they have the arch exposed and ready to demolish.

They've got most of the dirt in place for the roadway improvements and the storm boxes.  This is looking south towards the entrance to Line Creek Community Center.

The project includes a "oval" roundabout that ties NW 62nd Street (entrance to Clayton Meadows) and the entrance the the Line Creek Community Center and Kansas City Northern Railroad.  I didn't see a powerpoint on the ordinance on the clerk.kcmo.gov website but I did have a copy of the aerial map that was used for the public hearing back in 2016.  Keep in mind this project got a federal grant in 2014 and ten years later it's finally under construction.  The final project probably changed but this gives you an idea of the improvements.  North is to the right

The roundabout requires some retaining wall and I went through the site in the end of June and the blocks had just been delivered.  By the end of July, they had the walls built.  This is looking southeast at the retaining wall along the east side of the roundabout and between NW 62nd Street and the Clay-Platte Montessori School

Now south of the roundabout the project is done.  For those of you from the north who only take the road to get to the Price Rite Market and turn around, following are some pictures of the finished product.  By the way, I you haven't gotten anything at Price Rite, you should.  All the food is awesome.  I'd start with the biscuits and gravy then grab a sandwhich for lunch, then finish it off with one of their take and bake pastas.  Oh, I guess I'm hungry and off topic so back to construction.  If you live north and haven't seen the finished project, it's a great parkway.   The narrow culvert crossing which if you drove off of would result in instant death in front of the school is gone (it was something else biking across it in the morning with school traffic).  It has sidewalk and a trail on the east side so kids can walk to school.  This is looking south at the new crossing.  Line Creek Elementary is on the left.

The project did some stream bank stabilization and so now the baseball fields at Vaydik Park aren't in danger of washing away or anyone getting hurt going over the fence to get a ball.  This is looking west at the bank stabilization from the north entrance to the school.  This had to be done to protect the new arch culvert and the road from falling into the creek in the future.

This is looking north from the school bus entrance towards the community center.  So much nicer than the old death trap culvert.

The school now has a nice ten foot wide sidepath trail for kids to safely get to school and for everyone on the east side of the street to safely get to the Line Creek Trail.  This is looking south from the bus entrance.  The school is on the left.

The project also includes a dedicated cross walk to get to the Vaydik Park soccer and baseball fields and also for anyone in the Englewood Apartments to safely walk to school.  This is looking west from NW 56th Terrace.

This project was funded with a $5M federal grant that some of you back in 2014 were nice enough to send support letters and emails to help get the grant.  The rest of the construction money is coming from Platte County's road sales tax even though Kansas City is managing the project.  If you would like to see the improvements continue south of Englewood all the way to Vivion so people can access the Vivion Road and Interurban Trails, you can easily put your name to the online petition I created to help with a Platte County grant that's recently been submitted.  All you need to do is go here and it would be greatly appreciated.

Also Tuesday is election day and it's a big day to vote to show that you back the blue and as always I'm always more than happy to share my recommendations for Governor, Lt. Governor (Go Holly!) and the rest who I think would do a good job leading the state of Missouri. Now since it's Saturday morning, I'm heading out to get some Price Rite biscuits and gravy.