Project to fix Wichita area’s worst highway bottleneck in line for county funding
Sedgwick County, Wichita and the Kansas Department of Transportation are about to start on a plan to relieve the area’s biggest traffic headache, the oft-congested interchange of I-135 and I-235 in north Wichita.
On Wednesday, the Sedgwick County Commission is expected to vote on spending $3.7 million toward the rebuilding of the “North Junction,” a well-known bottleneck between the city and points north.
The project started in November 2018, but the work to date has been mostly rebuilding parts of I-235 to the west of the interchange and the only impact on traffic flow has been to slow things down in the construction area.
While that was a necessary preliminary step, “at least the next phase will start alleviating some of the congestion,” said county Commissioner David Dennis.
Dennis said the interchange, which backs up every workday morning and evening, is not just the worst traffic bottleneck in Wichita. It’s the worst throughout the region with reverberations north to Newton and beyond.
“That’s where we have the most accidents and the most congestion,” he said.
The upcoming project won’t fix everything that’s wrong, but it will make a substantial dent in the problem, said Tom Hein, spokesman for the Kansas Department of Transportation.
It will involve two major fixes:
▪ The current connection from northbound I-135 to 1-235 going west, now a low-speed cloverleaf ramp, will be replaced with a much more efficient flyover, similar to the Kellogg Flyover about 5 miles to the south. The new flyover will connect to I-135 near 37th Street North, well south of the interchange.
▪ The connecting ramp from southbound I-135 to I-235 will be replaced with a longer ramp that will allow for smoother traffic flow to I-235 heading west.
The project will cost $49 million overall.
The city and county together will pay 25% of the $30 million construction cost. The state will pay 75% of the construction cost and all of the cost of engineering and right-of-way acquisition.
The county is expected to approve its share of the money at its meeting Wednesday. The city will vote on its share in coming weeks, said Mayor Brandon Whipple.
Once the funding is in place, the state will bid out the contract and work is expected to begin in the spring, Hein said.
It will probably take two construction seasons to finish the flyover and ramp phase of the project, he said.
