The Line Creek Loudmouth

Almost Cold Enough to Break the Paseo Bridge

It's really cold tonight.  How cold?  Cold enough to break a bridge? 

Nearly 14 years ago on January 22, 2003 when the old Paseo Bridge (see my December 2015 post on the original Paseo Bridge renderings) was closed when one of the joints failed because of the extreme cold weather.  I didn't remember why the failure happened so I did some research.  

I came across an eight page proposal written by Genda Chen and Lokesh Dharani to look at the structural failures which you can read here or you could just follow along with snippets.  The proposal had some detailed pictures of the failure.

After intensive research and study team of G. Chen, C. Courtright, L. R. Dharani, and B. Xu (full 98 page report here) came to the following conclusions:

Too bad the superstructure of the bridge wasn't designed as good as the substructure of the bridge.  It would have lasted forever.  Dykon Blasting Corporation had to use quite a bit of explosives to get the piers demolished.  The company website has a pretty simple summary of the demolition here.  I also pulled these pictures and text from an article by David Hersey that he wrote for the September/October 2012 edition of the Journal of Explosive Engineers.

Robert Ohl uploaded the following video of the blast which happened at night.

 

I came across this video by KCHistoryman Meade which has a bunch of neat old pictures of the bridge.  I'm glad there are people like him who do stuff like this. 

Enjoy memories of the old bridge and while forgetting about the frequent backups on it.  I think I gave credit to everyone but if I missed you, let me know and I will update the post.  I'm glad folks took the time to document the old Paseo Bridge.

The Warwick Thruway

Following up on yesterday's Kansas City freeway planning map post, people in this town have had a long history and determination to carve up Kansas City since the mid-20th century.  In the early 1940's, Barney Allis and Ernest Brostrom were concocting the Warwick Thruway which appeared to be some sort of quasi expressway with grade separations and tight interchanges.

The plan included two connections across the Missouri River using the ASB Bridge and a proposed new railroad and highway bridge near the airport.  If you were wondering what that area looked like then, check out the illustrations from the Paseo Bridge Toll Study Renderings post which has more illustrations like the one below.

I'm guessing railroad stubbornness and lack of ability to think big picture has been part of the railroad culture since the 1800's.  Even back in 1942, the railroad couldn't see the benefits of working with another entity in a win-win situation to figure out a way to build a shared bridge and create a more efficient track alignment from the West Bottoms to the North Kansas City switching yard.  Railroad policy makers haven't changed and still can't understand the concept of "return on investment" and don't mind losing hundreds of millions of dollars over the past 70 years by having to operate slow and continually fix and maintain sharp railroad curves.  They still operate the same way.  Penny pinching, tons foolish (or whatever the saying is).

The plan would have destroyed Washington Square Park, Crown Center, and cut through Union Cemetery.

There also was a second option on how to get through downtown Kansas City that involved tunneling under Main Street.

Download the three strip maps (50MB +/- each) and look over what was maybe the first urban freeway proposed for KCMO.

Download Warwick-Thruway-EntirePlan

Download Warwick-Thruway-Zoom-Opt1

Download Warwick-Thruway-Zoom-Opt2

Driven on I-735 or MO 769 Lately?

I've come across a 1945 highway planning map and a 1947 highway planning map. This latest find seems rather comprehensive and surgical at slicing up the city.

I'm not sure what the time this freeway/trafficway planning map was created but it shows the 31st Street and Country Club Freeways which were never built.  I'm guessing it would have been done 1955-1958 as it shows the Kansas Turnpike, the Paseo Bridge (see this blog post), I-29 up to Riverside, and I-35 up to Claycomo as solid lines.  However, it could have been 1962ish as it shows all of the north, east, and very far south annexations which didn't happen until then.

All of these explain why I-70 was designed at the "Jackson curves."  Playing around with the aerial below, one can see where quite a few whole blocks were bought up to finish the Southeast Freeway down to Blue Parkway (aka US 50 before I-435 was done).  

Why was this interchange designed as it was?  Because of the Southeast Freeway which I always knew about but maybe because of the proposed I-735 which would have gone from this interchange due west over to where I-35 curves at the KS/MO state line. 

I wonder if that's why I-35 has a median that widens out because a wide median wasn't really needed to build the Southwest Trafficway interchange bridges.

The map also shows the US 24 connection from I-70 at Truman over to Independence Avenue along the Kansas City Terminal Railroad tracks and the MO 769 Country Club Freeway which basically would have followed the Trolley Track Trail all the way down to Hickman Mills Drive at 87th Street.

It also showed how State Line Drive was kind of the end of civilization.

It also still showed I-635 using the Fairfax Bridges.

The map also gives a shout out to us Miltonwood residents and shows the old Drennon Lake.

This planning map was hand drawn and it should have been weird drawing lines on a map knowing that it would displace tens of thousands of people, families, and businesses.  If we didn't have a federal highway bill throwing gobs of money at Department of Transportation's back then, would we as a country really have spent all the money to buy all that property?  Maybe massive federal spending on infrastructure really isn't good government (hint, Stongtowns plug follow here).

The map can be downloaded here but please be careful as it is 60+MB and should be done over WiFi.

Download Mid-1950s-Kansas-City-Freeway-Planning-Map2 

 

 

1947 Riverfront Master Plan Wanted Another Freeway

I once did a write up and blog post about the 6th Street Freeway (North Loop) and speculated that a freeway along the river made more sense.  Looks like it was considered.  I got a copy of the 1947 KCMO Riverfront Masterplan.

Below is the foreword for the plan to give you a little context.

The start of the plan.

Here it is.........the Riverfront Highway!

In case you were wondering what the area looked like at the time, check out my post with a 1940's picture of the Hannibal Bridge, another picture of the second Hannibal Bridge, and this post shows what the area looked like around this time.  It's not a very developed area.  It would have torn up the Town of Kansas area but I'm not sure that would have mattered as the area was neglected and fell apart eventually.  It also would have left blocks along 5th and 6th Streets and not decimated Columbus Park.

Here is what the Northeast Industrial District looked like before public infrastructure was extended to the area as a result of this plan.

This was a plate showing where all the highways would go. 

This is a zoomed in area trying to highlight the parallel riverfront highway.

There were also some renderings of the proposed Woodsweather and Chestnut viaducts.

The plan had a layout of all sorts of streets in the northeast bottoms.

What was interesting about this plan was the desire to turn the Milwaukee (later renamed Chouteau) Bridge into a automobile crossing.

 

 The highways were of such importance they warranted an appendix. 

 

The report also had three different plates showing different street networks.

All three plates had an "Interregional Freeway" along the bottom of the Old Northeast bluff.  I guess people needed to bypass all the lights on Independence/24 to get through town.  It's not like US 40 existed on 31st Street at the time. 

Unfortunately it took some time to peruse the report and then pull these images out so I may have missed something.  If something stands out in the report, leave me a comment and I'll look at it for the next follow up post.

Paseo Bridge Toll Study Renderings

I've gotten a hold of a copy of the original 1950 Paseo Bridge toll study.  This was a KCMO led study which looked at a new Missouri River crossing and also some connecting highways.  I figured I would share the rendering of the proposed highways as I haven't had time to break up the entire study into manageable PDF sizes.

The general alignment is very different than the 1945 Highway Planning map and maybe the aerials from my "Kansas City Before Freeways" post were used to put this rendering together.  I am also guessing this was done right after the 1947 more detailed highway plan.  This Paseo Bridge Toll Study eventually connected to the 6th Street Freeway downtown and didn't show anything connecting over to Kansas.

I zoomed in and labeled some of the pictures.  I noted Harlem for my good friend Jason Withington.  What stood out in this picture is how the road from the Hannibal Bridge split off and went into Harlem the way it did.  The zig zag from the ASB Bridge to 6th and Oak was rather strange looking also.

Next is a zoomed in shot of the new bridge and how it would connect to The Paseo.  I thought it was interesting they were thinking of bridging Independence over The Paseo (light blue arrow).  A bridge there would have solved some of the accident and geometry issues there (and maybe prevented the sleazebag hotel row it became).

Below is a zoomed in shot of the then only Muncipal Airport and Harlem.

It looks like the freeway was built almost according to plan through North Kansas City.  I would surmise that the freeway and the interchanges between the River and 16th Avenue allowed NKC to develop the Paseo Industrial District where nothing stood back in the 1940's between the River and railroads.

Once it entered the uplands of southern Clay County, the highways were planned different that how the 29/35 split was built.  The alignment from Chouteau and up to Vivion is the same as that followed the old Excelsior Springs Interurban Line till the current day Pleasant Valley interchange.

Below is the US 71 split over into Platte County.  This split ended where Gateway leaves Riverside and starts northwest towards Platte City.  It appears to me that I-29 was eventually built south of the Vivion and North Oak intersection where the plan had the highway crossing north.

Here's the whole 14MB+/- PDF for you to play around with. 

Download 1950-PaseoBridgeTollStudy-IndividualExhibits (1)

In the meantime, I don't know about you but 2015 has been a real interesting and eventful year.  There are a lot of things I am very thankful for.  For me Christmas Eve worship service is going to be a wonderful fitting end to this year.  If you don't have any plans, there are plenty of churches with services but at Antioch Bible Baptist Church in Gladstone, we are having some short services at 4:30, 5:30, and 6:30.  If interested, details are here.

I don't know if I will have time to do another post this year (it's freezing outside and I have a couch, a blanket, and a 30# teddy bear to hold) so I want to thank you for reading my hobby page and wish you a Merry Christmas.

US 71 and 18th Street Interchange Study

One of my first projects out of college was doing final quantity check for the construction plans for the last phase of the South Midtown Freeway.  Fresh out of school, I was in for rude awakening.  Rather than doing all sorts of cool design stuff, I was using simple math and geometry checking work done by others.  It was rather tedious but it did help me later in my career by stressing the importance showing your work and doing it so that someone could understand it easily in the future.  

One of the first things I had to check was the concrete slope protection and brick pavers underneath the bridges.   Concrete slope protection is put underneath the bridges since the area is always shaded so nothing ever grows and also to prevent rainwater from eroding out and exposing the bridge piers.

Anyways, enough filler.  I guess at some point someone thought putting an interchange at 18th Street so people could get onto the new US 71 freeway was a worthy idea and completed a study.  Three options were evaluated and either it cost to much to do or people realized having an interchange three blocks away from an interstate to interstate interchange was a bad idea.

You can download and read the whole 59+MB study this weekend.  The only thing that I noticed skimming it was the land use prediction for the area.

Obviously the land use changed.  No one even considered that the whole swath of the Crossroads would de-industrialize and become what it is.  That's why I always question traffic studies or projections.   There needs to be a little intuition or comparison to similar areas rather than blindly believing something a computer model spits out. especially when massive increases in traffic are predicted in developed areas.  Any predictive model is only as good as the assumptions behind the variables in it are.

Download US71-18thStreet-InterchangeStudy

 

Birth of the 6th Street Freeway?

I came across a copy of one of the first Kansas City specific federal redevelopment plans which explains the reason why Main/Delaware is configured the way it is today. 

View Larger Map  |  Get Directions  |  View Bird's Eye

I decided that I would add a "KC Freeway History" sub-category on the right since I am going to start having more and more stuff to blog about freeways.  I need to find the time to go back and re-tag posts like the 1985 Kansas City Downtown Loop Study and the 1947 Kansas City Master Plan Downtown Loop posts.  It appears that the layout of Main/Delaware was all done for the sake of redevelopment for surface parking facilities.  This was the land use in the 1940's.

You can download at the bott0m of the post and read the whole report but here are some interesting tidbits I noticed when skimming the report.

What is interesting is the report explains the reason for the weird U-turn ramps underneath the south side of the Main/I-70 bridge were designed for the street car to turn around.  The project essentially severed the River Market from the street car system.

Was traffic really that bad or people in that big of a hurry after WWII that this was such a big concern?

I also found it interesting the freeway/trafficway map was slightly different from the 1947 KC master plan.  The redevelopment master plan had the Paseo Bridge connection across the river while the 1947 plan, in color below, did not.

The difference in the two leads me to believe the radio myth that the 6th Street Freeway was located solely to break up the Italian voting block.  There is no other reason for that highway to be planned in its location unless it was a political decision.  Other cities (Buffalo, Seattle, New  York City, etc) routed their freeways along rivers or other publicly owned areas and a freeway could have been built along the south side of the Missouri River a lot easier than putting it along the 6th Street corridor. 

Aerial views of the riverfront are shown in the "Kansas City Before Freeways" and "1940's Hannibal Bridge Picture." If you look at those pictures, there was a lot of ground between the City and the River that would have been an easy freeway connection from the new river crossing bridge to the Intercity Viaduct.  Putting the highway there would have made more sense for transportation versus and urban renewal project.  It's too bad the engineers and planners in the 1940's didn't have the Talking Heads in their iPods™ to give them some inspiration...

Download Northside URP - 7-6-1953 (00174925xA7821)

 

Song credit to Talking Heads.

1985 Kansas City Downtown Loop Study

I spent way too much time this weekend driving through massive freeway infrastructure with a trip to Omaha and back so allow me to vent at the start of this post.  I actually counted a section of I-80 which had 14 lanes........

It's amazing how "system to system" interchanges, ie. I-80 to I-480, really take up a lot of space and require massive viaducts which cost a lot of money to maintain and replace. 

View Larger MapDriving Directions

The Federal Highway Trust Fund is going broke and the easy, knee jerk excuse is the fact that gas taxes have not gone up since 1993 and vehicles are more fuel efficient.  However, I feel part of the reason why our infrastructure is crumbling was over-building and over planning and our policy makers didn't do a good job of overseeing transportation designers and planners.  Now it costs so much to replace what we have and no one is asking if we are spending taxpayer money on infrastructure which might have a negative return on investment. 

This is St. Joseph, Missouri which has a metro area population right near 127,000 people.  Don't get me wrong, the engineer in me loves the double decked viaduct right on top of the Missouri River and all the ramps and merges.  It breaks up the trip but I wonder if it really was necessary to be an interstate highway versus an urban parkway or arterial.

View Larger MapDriving Directions

 

In the civil engineering profession, the first step in a transportation project is a study.  That study, of course, predicts massive amounts of traffic and therefore something has to be done (real world example of what I drove on this weekend here).  The highway designers and bridge engineers start to get excited because more highways and bridges to design means more design fee.

It's a viscous cycle that I don't think FHWA or the engineering profession really comprehends.  The voters don't seem to want to pay more for the product being put out by FHWA and government doesn't evolve to the market like the private sector has to.  FHWA isn't going out of business like companies who didn't change with the culture (Montgomery Wards™, Woolworth™, Palm™).

Anyways, the Kansas City Downtown freeway loop has had issues from day 1.  I think it all started with the original 1947 concept layout.  I found a 1985 study of the loop and pulled the conclusions for you to review.  You can download the whole report at the bottom of the post.

I so wanted to editorialize like Beavis and Butthead watching a music video but didn't with the exception of one section.

Some of these traffic and accident issues went away with the construction of the mega bridges and viaducts of I-670 (if all of those viaducts were built in the late 1980's, I wonder what the cost to replace them will be in the 2030's?).

View Larger MapDriving Directions

 

Here was the downtown loop from the early 1980's.

One thing I noticed is that they did remove some of the odd ramps that needed removal near I-70 and Oak/Locust.  I tried showing them with blue arrows.  I did find it interesting that there still were a lot of buildings in Columbus Park including some between Independence Avenue and I-70 in the aerial in the green box.  I think the black dots denote accident locations.

Here is one of the recommendations in a simple map format.

You can download the whole report here and read at your pleasure.  

Download 1985-DowntownLoop-Study

Kansas City Before Freeways

Earlier I shared the 1947 master plan for for downtown and the freeway system.  Tonight as I was looking through a flash drive for something to write about, I came across some old pictures of downtown before the Paseo Bridge was built.  I don't know when these were taken but I assume it had something to do with the planning for a new river crossing later to be known as the Paseo Bridge.

This is looking south from North Kansas City towards the Northeast area.  City Hall and the ASB Bridge are on the right.  Notice the pollution coming from the downtown power plant.

I tried replicated the shot with current aerial views but website won't let me embed it so you can compare the past to today.  You will have to arrange your windown side by side after clicking the map here.

I also zoomed in and tried to label some of the north-south streets.  I didn't want to block to much so you might have to strain to see the green arrow which denotes The Paseo.

The red arrow is Campbell Street which was where the east part of the loop was constructed.  The yellow arrow is Gillis where people used to get down to the bottoms until the federal government tore everything down and changed the street network to build a housing project.

I also found this picture someone was using to locate the freeways in the city.  This is looking north from above 17th/18th Street.

Here is what the west side of downtown looked like when it was just the Intercity Viaduct.  Notice the Jetson style rendering of the building on the bluff.  The picture was taken above the Missouri River and looking towards the southeast.  Also note the 8th Street Tunnel that took people from the bottoms to downtown.

One thing that stands out in all these pictures is the lack of trees on the slopes.  I wonder if that was because fire code and service weren't exactly reliable and people didn't want mass fire to spread all over like Chicago in 1871.

I have a bunch of other things but they warrant more time for their own post.  In the meantime while it's popular to blame freeways for the de-population of the urban core, people shouldn't let "urban renewal" projects such as concentrated housing projects off the hook.  Last time I drove through the area, Gillis and 4th Street is now vacant and there is nothing there.

Clip credit to Reason.tv.

Think the Downtown Freeway Loop Is Confusing Today

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.

Download 1947-KCMO-MasterPlan 22

1945 Highway Planning Map with Streetcar and Trolleys

Wouldn't it have been great to be able to just draw stuff like this that would impact the whole area using a crayon?  I bet it was a lot more efficient and cheaper back in the old days using a drafting table and paper.

Preceding the 1947 Kansas City Highway Planning Map, this is a highway planning map from a 1945 study I found laying around.  I am guessing that one of the first implementation phases of this plan was the I-35/Southwest Trafficway viaduct.

A zoomed in version of that map below.  Check out the bridge at Paseo and Linwood, Gillham and 39th, and Paseo and Truman.  Even 23rd Street wasn't built yet on the east side of town.

The study also had streetcar and trolley lines included in it. 

A zoomed in view.

Kind of interesting how 70 years ago, KCMO was planning a downtown loop like Chicago but never fully implemented it.

This gives me another excuse to watch one of my favorite Scooby Doo chase scenes without its own chase song.

Cartoon credits to Warner Brothers from the Scooby Doo Show. 

 

 

 

 

 

1967 Brush Creek Valley Highway Plan

Found an old 1967 study that KCMO completed that looked at how to improve traffic flow along Brush Creek.  I attached the entire study in case anyone wants to see what the end result of our universities putting engineering students through 4 semesters of calculus , 3 semesters of physics, 2 semesters of physics, and 2 semesters of statistics without requiring any writing courses.  The end results are long technical reports that really don't say anything and aren't executive summarized(?) so that a high school graduate can understand.  The picture below is the general layout of the concepts proposed in the plan from the Plaza all the way to Woodland. 

Download 1967-BrushCreekHighwayStudy

The study proposed an elaborate directional interchange at Brookside/Main/Volker/Brush Creek.  The Main/Brookside corridor was at one time studied to be upgraded as the Country Club Freeway.  The freeway was going to use the ATA's Trolley Track right of way to build a depressed or elevated freeway, ala I-670, connecting Westport to present day US 71 at 87th Street.

Before you wonder what they were thinking, at that time, Brush Creek Boulevard was US 50 and the main route through town other than US 40 becuase I-470 and I-435 were not complete as shown in the 1962 Phillips 66 Road Map below.  I need to warn you that the photos are large size and best viewed over wi-fi.

While I had the map out, I went ahead and scanned the midtown insert.

 

The northland in the same time.  The map shows how I-29 and I-35 were slowly extending out of downtown.  The world ended at "Gashland" aka Barry Road.  What is strange about this map is there is no NW 68th Street west of US 169 but a bridge shown at NW 72nd Street.  There are a couple of other irregularities that probably aren't the case.  The map did have the old town of Milton shown but by that time Acme had dissapeared.

The map also included a sightseeing tour guide.