Residents weigh in on the future of 71 Highway
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71 Highway at 63rd Street. Photo: Travis Meier/Axios
City planners are meeting with residents today for the final community summit meant to reimagine U.S. Highway 71 and the future of its surrounding neighborhoods.
Why it matters: The project, dubbed Reconnecting the East Side, seeks to address the harms created by the highway, which demolished swaths of minority neighborhoods and created one of KC's most dangerous roads.
Flashback: Kansas City's first Black city councilmember, Bruce R. Watkins, led protests against the project in the '60s, calling it "Kansas City's Berlin Wall," KCUR reported.
- Construction ultimately tore down thousands of homes and displaced as many as 7,400 residents, most of whom were Black, according to the city.
- The highway wasn't finished until 2001. In 2022, the city secured a federal grant to study revitalizing the corridor.
Zoom in: The project focuses on the southern part of 71 Highway, from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard down to 85th Street.
- City leaders say the 5-mile section, which includes stoplights and a lower speed limit, has not delivered on its intended purpose: to provide better connectivity and economic benefits.
- It now has the highest concentration of crashes involving pedestrians and cyclists in the entire city, per the 2022 Vision Zero plan, and has some of the most crashes resulting in deaths and injuries.
Between the lines: Part of the highway's designation as "less than a highway and more than a parkway" comes from a 1985 federal decree, which the project team will need to overturn after the initial study phase is complete in order to modify the highway.
- Creating the study and addressing the decree is funded by $5 million from the federal government, plus $2.5 million from the Missouri Department of Transportation and the city of KCMO.
State of play: Previous engagement sessions resulted in three options: make the whole thing a freeway with no lights; turn it into a parkway with more lights and a lower speed limit; or return it to a city grid street that favors pedestrians over cars.
- The decisions could impact nine neighborhoods, from The Paseo in the west to Swope Parkway in the east.
- All options aim to provide more connectivity between each side of 71, so communities that were once whole can move more easily over the divide.
What they're saying: In an interactive map open to public comment, suggestions include adding sound barriers and more pedestrian bridge crossings while removing stoplight intersections.
If you go: The event today is from 5:30–7:30pm at St. James United Methodist Church, 5540 Wayne Ave.