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The Kansas Department of Transportation and the Bonner Springs City Council may have reached a middle ground during a special work session, but that ground is still a bit shaky.

“It is amazing to me that with the current advances in highway design, this is the best design (KDOT) has come up with,” council member Jeff Harrington said regarding the current design for the as-of-yet-unfunded Kansas Highway 7 and Interstate 70 interchange project.

The meeting was a direct result of a letter the council wrote to KDOT in May, outlining issues it has with the project. In their response, officials with KDOT invited the council to meet.

The letters and invitation culminated in a special work session at 7 p.m. June 17, where city officials, city council members and officials with both KDOT and GBA Architects Engineers were in attendance. Members of the council, in addition to such city officials as city manager John “Jack” Helin and community and economic development director Marcia Ashford, also met at 6 p.m. prior to the work session to get on the same page as to what would be discussed with KDOT.

“We represent the city of Bonner Springs, and what we want to do is what’s best for the city of Bonner Springs,” Mayor Clausie Smith said at the beginning of the 7 p.m. work session. “We have very little developable land, and we don’t want to lose any of it if we can help it. We feel we’re the ones (being most affected) through the whole (K-7) corridor.”

Following Smith’s remarks, Harrington began going over each of the five issues outlined in the letters, starting with 134th Street, which the city council believes should stay open during the project as a connecting point between the north and south areas of the city. In the design proposed by KDOT, however, that street would be closed and another street, 136th Street, would serve as a substitute connector.

“We’re pretty committed to 134th,” Harrington said.

Aaron Frits, road squad leader with KDOT, echoed what had been written in KDOT’s response to the council’s letter, saying that if the city wanted 134th Street to remain open, KDOT would accommodate that desire.

The next issue was regarding Riverview Avenue, which the city council believes should serve as an access point across or underneath K-7.

Frits said the design had a proposed alternate access point across K-7 farther north of Riverview, byway of a connecting road from 130th Street to 126th Street.

“That seems counterproductive to that whole area,” Harrington said.

Along with a PowerPoint, Frits and Tim Ross, senior vice president of GBA Architects Engineers, gave several reasons why making Riverview an access point across K-7 wouldn’t serve the city’s best interests. Chief among them was that three residential properties along Riverview would lose access onto the road because of the difference in elevation such a step would create. Ross conceded this idea wasn’t an impossibility, but asked the council to consider the alternative.

“We just want to make sure you have a mental image if you decide that’s what you really would rather have instead of a connection to Riverview farther north,” Ross said. “It will really affect (those properties).”

One major bone of contention during the work session was the amount of lanes K-7 would have, up to 11 in some areas, and the size of the interchange loops. Frits said the number of lanes was the bare minimum that had to be required to safely accommodate all of the movements, such as through movements and on and off movements, which would be taking place. Harrington said that was a very large footprint to be leaving in Bonner Springs, noting that “through traffic is nice, but it’s an impact on us at our expense.”

“You are protecting your needs, but we are protecting the needs of the traveling public of the state,” Frits said in response. “We have a duty to them to provide a design for their needs ,as well.”

“If you want to stick on the greater good of Kansas, I’m going to stick to the greater good of Bonner Springs,” Harrington said. “It’s as if Bonner Springs and Wyandotte County has a lower level of priority (than surrounding counties).”

Ross said the design was very atypical, as it allowed for direct access into commercial areas in Bonner Springs which, he argued, was what the city had asked for in the first place.

“There aren’t interchanges with heavy duty traffic from freeway to freeway with direct access into a commercial area,” Ross said. “You know, to us, it’s our impression of your desires, more than it was worth it to have these loops (at this size). We thought we were doing what was asked.”

Ross showed a visual example of the first design for the project, created in 2000, and said that additional designs had also been looked at, including the use of flyovers, which the council believes would drastically lower the land impact in Bonner Springs. But, he said, the current design at this point was the best one to accommodate both the city’s needs and the huge volumes of traffic that were inevitable in the coming years.

“Traffic is coming, and it’s growing everyday,” Ross said. “And that’s the findings of the K-7 Corridor Management Study – that it will triple, and in our lifetime.”

Following the meeting, Frits said he believed a better understanding had been achieved between KDOT and the city. He said KDOT would continue to work on combining safety concerns with those of the city of Bonner Springs as it moves closer to a final design.

“We realize the impact the interchange will have on the city’s developable land, and we wouldn’t be using the land if we didn’t think it was vitally important for driving safety,” Frits said in an e-mail. “We are also working hard to provide safe access from K-7 to the land around the highway so the city will have some flexibility to develop it in the future.”

Harrington agreed that it had been an effective meeting, but he seemed resigned to the fact that there might not be many more changes to KDOT’s current design.

“I think it seems as if they have a better understanding of our position,” Harrington said. “I don’t feel real sure that they will change all of their plans to meet our needs, but I feel they’re having a better understanding.”

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