Federal approval for new Paseo Bridge--including bike/ped design

Saturday's KCStar reported:

The Federal Highway Administration gave state highway planners the environmental clearance they needed to proceed with the Paseo Bridge project.

The project calls for upgrading the Paseo Bridge and widening about four miles of I-29/35 from North Kansas City to downtown. The highway would be widened to three lanes in each direction, with the possibility of a fourth lane later. . . .

Bowing to community pressure, the Missouri Department of Transportation agreed to include the design of a future bike lane on the new Paseo Bridge.

Engineers won’t necessarily draw up a plan showing a bridge with a bike/pedestrian lane. But the state hopes they can design a landmark bridge equipped to handle a bike lane in the future.

MoDOT's commitment to bike/ped is that they will design the bridge so that bike/ped can be added--but not necessarily build the bike/ped facilities at this time.

In addition, MoDOT has agreed to actually build bike/ped facilities on the Heart of America Bridge, which is about a mile away. That construction will take place in late 2011 or 2012, after Paseo construction is complete.

Many, many thanks to all of you who have taken time to contact MoDOT on this important issue. This will create the first good, safe bicycle and pedestrian crossing of the Missouri River near downtown Kansas City, Missouri--and the possibility of a second crossing.

The amount of walking and bicycling in Kansas City is less than half the national average. And large metro areas are usually above the national average. Experience in other cities shows that bridging major barriers for bicyclists and pedestrians in the most important step that can be taken to increase the amount of walking and bicycling.

In addition, this is the first time MoDOT has allowed bike/ped facilities to be planned on an interstate freeway bridge. Despite many state concerns about the safety of such facilities, we were able to produce data showing that these facilities--which are separated from freeway traffic by concrete barriers--have a perfect safety record.

Moving forward, much depends on the decisions made during the design-build process for the bridge. Our goal is to have the bridge designed and constructed in such a way as to make the addition of bike/ped facilities to the project as economical as possible.