Kansas City Residents Demand Safer Streets
In 2017, BikeWalkKC was awarded a grant to work with communities in Kansas City to make bottom-up change happen. Partnering with a local children’s hospital, they identified two locations for quick-build projects to see how people, both in vehicles and on foot, would respond. The groups painted temporary bump-outs and crosswalks at the intersection of Van Brunt & St. John as well as at 10th and Benton, another location in the Northeast. Traffic behavior was measured both before and after the implementation, and the results affirmed feelings among the community.
As BikeWalkKC reports, “Rolling stops decreased by 10%, pedestrian use increased by 23%,” and the changes did not divert traffic; similar car counts were found before and after the experiment. In the end, “70% of survey respondents said they wanted permanent improvements.” In 2020, the people’s demands were met. The KC Public Works department was granted funds to make these implementations permanent, with even more traffic calming sites outlined along St. John Ave. Construction for these improvements is scheduled to begin later this year.