Deadly road construction season in Kansas City wrapping up in time for winter

With winter fast approaching, one of the deadliest Kansas City road construction seasons in recent memory is coming to a close.

Crews last week removed the concrete safety barriers along the Interstate 435 pavement reconstruction project in Overland Park.

It’s one of several road projects that have caused major crashes, inspiring the department of transportation in Kansas to add rumble strips to the I-435 project.

The first season of the two-year project is complete, and crews re-striped the highway over the weekend. The 140,000 vehicles that travel that road every day now can move along the original lanes.

The $16.34 million pavement reconstruction project between U.S. 69 and Metcalf Avenue is also on schedule and still expected to be completed in November of next year.

“We cannot do certain things during the winter months when we are at freezing temperatures and with certain types of precipitation,” said Nicole Randall, director of communications for the Kansas Department of Transportation.

“Pouring concrete and things like that can happen only with certain temperatures.”

This year’s construction season has been marred by crashes, including deadly ones on both sides of the state line in the Kansas City area.

The I-435 pavement project proved to be one of the most troublesome with several crashes, including fiery ones, occurring in the work zone.

▪ In April, crashes that involved a tractor-trailer moved more than 40 temporary barriers, splitting one in half. Video showed sparks flying as the tractor-trailer slammed into the barriers.

▪ On July 11, a tractor-trailer hit a concrete barrier and caught fire.

▪ On July 17, a fiery rush hour crash involving five vehicles shut down the highway. Willie “Darryl” Wilson, who was pulled from the fiery crash, died weeks later.

▪ On Aug. 16, a tractor-trailer crashed into a median. The Overland Park Police Department released a video that showed a tractor-trailer crashing and bursting into flames.

“When there were all those crashes that went on and there were some collisions, we were concerned and we decided to go ahead and start evaluating,” Randall said.

KDOT officials looked at several options and decided to add rumble strips into the pavement to alert drivers that they were entering a construction zone.

Randall said such evaluations are typical of every project and are not done just because there’s an issue. The evaluation is done to make sure nothing has changed since the original design, especially with multi-year projects.

That project was not the only work zone in the area to see deadly crashes.

▪ On July 11, five people were killed when a tractor-trailer smashed into backed-up traffic stopped for a construction zone on Interstate 70/The Kansas Turnpike near Bonner Springs.

▪ On May 12, four people were killed in a work zone crash on Interstate 29 near Platte City. A pickup truck smashed into the back of an SUV that was stopped for construction. The impact forced the SUV into the back of a semi-tractor, that was also stopped.

“Every year we try to get better at our work zones,” said Brian Burger, the Kansas City district construction and materials engineer for the Missouri Department of Transportation.

“We try to make them brighter where they can see them. We try to work in periods where less cars are driving so less impact on our travelers.”

MoDOT added signs this year to its work zones indicating they are “No Phone” zones in an attempt to get drivers to put their phones down.

“If one person puts their phone down, then it’s done something for us,” he said.

In addition to work zones safety, Burger noticed that the number of crashes into guardrails and guard cables continued to increase this year. As of mid-October, there had been 1,400 hits on guardrails/guardcables in the Kansas City area.

“I think it has to do with distracted driving,” Berger said.

The construction season was a busy year on both sides of the state line.

In Kansas, the larger projects included turn lanes and signals that were added to U.S. 169 and pavement replacement along Interstate 70.

One delayed project was bridge repair along Shawnee Mission Parkway, just west of Interstate 35 in Merriam.

A joint seal on the bridge needs to be replaced, but because of the summer heat crews were unable to do the work. With cooler weather, crews will be able to complete the work this month, Randall said.

Another project expected to be completed by the end of the year is the reconstruction of the Eastern Terminal toll plaza near Bonner Springs, according to a release by the Kansas Turnpike.

In Missouri, the season started earlier than usual with some carryover projects from last year. Crews also laid more asphalt by the beginning of summer than ever before.

“We had very favorable weather conditions in the spring that allowed us to get a lot of work started and rolling,” Burger said.

Some of the bigger projects included asphalt resurfacing of Interstate 29 from Platte City to Missouri 210 in North Kansas City and most of Missouri 152.

Several interchanges are being rebuilt as diverging diamond interchanges, including Interstate 435 at Missouri 210, U.S. 50 at Missouri 291 and 155th Street at Interstate 49.

All the projects that were expected to be completed this construction season should be open to traffic this year, Burger said.

Several projects, however, are scheduled to continue into next year, including the I-435/Missouri 210 interchange, which will be “normalized” for winter with I-435 back with two lanes on each bridge by winter.

The U.S. 50/Missouri 291 project and repairs to 15 bridges along I-470 will carry over into next season also.

“A lot of projects will be complete for the most part by Thanksgiving,” Burger said. “But if the weather is nice, we will continue into December if we can.”

This story was originally published November 6, 2017 at 7:00 AM with the headline "Deadly road construction season in Kansas City wrapping up in time for winter."