Broadway Bottleneck snarfs $61,000 in Wichita street money. Plus, an update on McLean
Congratulations, Wichita motorists. The city just spent another $61,000 of your money to slow you down.
This time, it’s the Broadway Bottleneck between 13th and 21st streets North.
The $61,000 is the cost overrun from a paving project there and it represents the extra cost of striping the roadway down from four lanes to three, with a turn lane and bike paths.
Don’t beat yourself up if you watched the City Council meeting on Tuesday and didn’t notice.
It was buried on the “consent agenda,” where multiple items are approved in a single block vote without discussion each week.
And even there, it was hidden under the inscrutable title “Change Order No. 1 for 2021 Outsourced Pavement Preservation Program Capital Improvement Program (CIP) Ultrathin Bonded Overlay (All Districts).”
Let me translate that for you: The city spent $4.55 million on resurfacing projects across the city, which is much-needed. But the extra cost of re-striping and re-signing Broadway for three lanes as a part of that project increased the contract cost to a little over $4.6 million.
It’s all a part of the city’s “road diet” fad, which is removing traffic lanes all over town with the explicit aim of slowing traffic flow by creating congestion where little to none existed before.
On Broadway, mission accomplished. After I wrote about the silly road diet project on McLean between Central and 13th two weeks ago, I’ve gotten lots of calls and emails from people also complaining about the choke point on Broadway backing up for blocks during the rush hours.
And this was a particularly poor time for this because Broadway is one of only two legit routes between downtown Wichita and the bedroom community of Park City. The other one, the Interstate 135 freeway, is under construction at the North Junction. It is and will be a rush hour nightmare for years to come.
And speaking of McLean, the city responded to my column with a public relations video about how it’s for our own good and how much safer we’ll be with two lanes instead of four.
But evidence is mounting that on this stretch of street that averaged a meager two accidents a year, people are already hitting the city’s “improvements” right and left.
The concrete island that’s supposed to guard a crosswalk on Ninth Street is already scuffed with tire marks on both sides and in the middle. Two readers called last week to tell me that a delivery van hit it and blew its tires.
And the pylons directing people into the absurdly short merge zone from westbound Central to northbound McLean already bear the scars from people running over them instead of getting sideswiped by through traffic.
But the best part of the city’s video was a denial that this is a precursor to developing the west bank of the river along that stretch of McLean. Council member Maggie Ballard assured viewers “all the space on the west side of the river is protected by the city for green space.”
Forgive my skepticism, but the track record is clear here. It’s all protected green space until a developer wants it.
Tell it to the North Delano neighbors who are at this moment fighting an uphill battle to stop the city from selling the green space on McLean between Vine and Fern to a developer for duplexes.
Or tell it to patrons of our sparkling new downtown library, which ended up with a stunning view of the backside of the River Vista Apartment complex after the city swapped away its river view land along McLean.
Or go a little further south and look at where McLean is two lanes by the baseball stadium, to clear $1-an-acre riverfront land for the owners of the Wind Surge to build a boutique hotel.
Now that McLean between Central and 13th is two lanes with a hilariously wide median, it would be oh so easy to move those lanes to the west side of the street and clear space for the city’s next big river view apartment complex.
Just remember. It’s for your own good.
