Bruce Waktins Dr/71 Hwy and the stoplights (Independence, Blue Springs: houses, neighborhoods)

[lovekcmo]

Why of the stoplights? A lot of my friends, from work are African-Americans, and they all seem to hate the stop lights and thing it's a racist thing that the city has the stoplights. I hear a lot from them that drive that they think the reason for the stop lights is for the police to have access. I read the article today in the Star about it and did some searching online about the reasons for them. From people that live in the neighborhoods of where the stoplights are none of them appreciate them being there. Just wandering if anyone out there on this site has any other reasons, than what the Star had to say, on why the stoplights are there?

[VietInKC]

I hate it. Some court order prevents them being removed. Probably just a method for law enforcement to gain some extra money catching red light runners.

[MarketStEl]

The non-controlled-access segment of Bruce Watkins Drive is the result of a compromise brokered by then-Mayor Emmanuel Cleaver II that ended a long-running legal standoff that had held up construction of the South Midtown Freeway, "the freeway the East Side didn't want."

The Missouri Highway Department (its name hadn't been changed yet) began acquiring land and demolishing houses along the freeway's route in the early 1970s. As soon as the bulldozers started moving, groups of residents in or near its path filed lawsuits seeking to halt its construction.

By this time, the "freeway revolt" was in full swing in cities across the country. City-dwellers, especially African-Americans whose neighborhoods got sliced in two by mega-roads designed to get suburbanites in and out of the city center and affluent urbanites who objected to new roads that would disfigure views from their homes or cut them off from nearby districts, fought to cancel or alter highway projects. It was during this period that most of the freeways planned for Washington and Philadelphia got scrapped, the replacement for New York City's West Side Highway got traded in for subway improvements, and, some time later, existing never-completed freeways demolished in San Francisco (after an earthquake damaged it in 1989) and Milwaukee. Freeways that didn't get canceled got altered to make them less disruptive, as with I-95 at Center City Philadelphia (the result of a fight between wealthy Society Hill residents and the Pennsylvania Highway Department that ultimately got Vice President Hubert Humphrey to intervene).

The path of the South Midtown passed three blocks west of my grandparents' house, which sits in a roughly 12-block section of southeast KC (52nd to 55th streets, Prospect Avenue to Town Fork Creek) that had been deeded for black settlement by the white farmer who had owned it upon his death. They didn't join the fight themselves, but some of their neighbors further west did. I wrote the Missouri Highway and Transportation Department to request the environmental impact study for the road in hopes of coming up with an alternative to it.

The eventual clearing of the path of the freeway, which continued while the lawsuits worked their way through the courts, didn't dampen the opposition. What did quiet it down was the compromise Cleaver proposed: the freeway would be built as a parkway between Brush Creek and 75th Street, with one interchange at 63d Street but the others turned into signalized intersections.

But if you note the design of the parkway, you might see how MoDOT planned for the freeway's eventual completion. The surface roads have a wide median between them - wide enough to insert a six-lane highway and turn the parkway into frontage roads.

So the residents may have won a battle rather than the war. But that will depend on whether enough people decide that the accident count on the surface-arterial portion of Bruce Watkins Drive is high enough to warrant inserting that freeway.

[lovekcmo]

Bruce Watkins/71 was planned, in it's early stages back in the 1950's to go down Prospect, if I'm correct, at that time it was a what you could call a "white neighborhood" at the time. But any neighborhood in any city could make the claim that an interstate was dividing up neighborhoods. I live in Independence, on the south side of I-70 and I 70 cuts through both Independence and Blue Springs, residents just use the bridges to cross over the interstate. Look at I-35 and all the cities/suburbs it cuts through in Johnson County.

[Okey Dokie]

Several years ago The Pitch had an excellent article about the stoplights but It appears to longer be online. It expanded a bit on what MarketSt posted above.

I find it ironic that the black community originally insisted on the parkway/stoplights concept and now they hate it.

[lovekcmo]

Originally Posted by Okey Dokie

Several years ago The Pitch had an excellent article about the stoplights but It appears to longer be online. It expanded a bit on what MarketSt posted above.

I find it ironic that the black community originally insisted on the parkway/stoplights concept and now they hate it.

And they do, I hear about it all the time from my African American coworker friends. What kills me is how some of them seem to think it's a racist deal by the city/state to have the stoplights . There's no reason bridges over an interstate couldn't have work, like all over the city and other cities that have separated towns/suburbs. A lot of my friends live in South KC or Grandview area and complain about the stop lights on their way in and out.

[MarketStEl]

Originally Posted by lovekcmo

Bruce Watkins/71 was planned, in it's early stages back in the 1950's to go down Prospect, if I'm correct, at that time it was a what you could call a "white neighborhood" at the time. But any neighborhood in any city could make the claim that an interstate was dividing up neighborhoods. I live in Independence, on the south side of I-70 and I 70 cuts through both Independence and Blue Springs, residents just use the bridges to cross over the interstate. Look at I-35 and all the cities/suburbs it cuts through in Johnson County.

One minor point about Interstate 35 in Johnson County:

Once past the US 69 (Metcalf Avenue) interchange, the highway runs through territory that was undeveloped at the time it was built in the mid-1960s.

That's largely true for most of the Interstates that run through the suburbs of our large cities. Yes, part of Independence - the area around the Blue Ridge Mall (1955) - had been developed by the time the Missouri Highway Department built I-70 through it, but the department had IIRC already taken the land where the future highway would run some years before construction began - which meant that no extant homes would be removed to make room for the road.

City neighborhoods - black or white, rich or poor - weren't so lucky. And yes, I know the neighborhood I grew up in, Oak Park - and Ivanhoe, through which Bruce Watkins Drive runs, to its west - were not mostly black when the MHD drew up plans for a freeway network for the city. But both had become so by the time the bulldozers started their work, so it doesn't surprise me that it then fell into the "white folks' roads through black folks' neighborhoods" meta-narrative.

I suspect, however, that had the neighborhoods remained mostly white, the residents would have been no happier to see a freeway rammed through them.

[lovekcmo]

Originally Posted by MarketStEl

One minor point about Interstate 35 in Johnson County:

Once past the US 69 (Metcalf Avenue) interchange, the highway runs through territory that was undeveloped at the time it was built in the mid-1960s.

That's largely true for most of the Interstates that run through the suburbs of our large cities. Yes, part of Independence - the area around the Blue Ridge Mall (1955) - had been developed by the time the Missouri Highway Department built I-70 through it, but the department had IIRC already taken the land where the future highway would run some years before construction began - which meant that no extant homes would be removed to make room for the road.

City neighborhoods - black or white, rich or poor - weren't so lucky. And yes, I know the neighborhood I grew up in, Oak Park - and Ivanhoe, through which Bruce Watkins Drive runs, to its west - were not mostly black when the MHD drew up plans for a freeway network for the city. But both had become so by the time the bulldozers started their work, so it doesn't surprise me that it then fell into the "white folks' roads through black folks' neighborhoods" meta-narrative.

I suspect, however, that had the neighborhoods remained mostly white, the residents would have been no happier to see a freeway rammed through them.

You made good, strong points. Now you have me thinking about the downtown loop. I've seen pictures online, from the 1940's and was surprised at how dense with neighborhoods, of homes, churches in all directions, but especially east of downtown, all now gone because of the interstate. entire neighborhoods were demolished for I-70 east of downtown. My home church was originally at 9th and Harrison and was demolished for the loop. The thing about Bruce Watkins is, it's there now, close the streets/stoplights and make it an interstate, have bridges where the cross streets are now.

[KC_Retiree]

Originally Posted by MarketStEl

One minor point about Interstate 35 in Johnson County:

Once past the US 69 (Metcalf Avenue) interchange, the highway runs through territory that was undeveloped at the time it was built in the mid-1960s.

That's largely true for most of the Interstates that run through the suburbs of our large cities. Yes, part of Independence - the area around the Blue Ridge Mall (1955) - had been developed by the time the Missouri Highway Department built I-70 through it, but the department had IIRC already taken the land where the future highway would run some years before construction began - which meant that no extant homes would be removed to make room for the road.

City neighborhoods - black or white, rich or poor - weren't so lucky. And yes, I know the neighborhood I grew up in, Oak Park - and Ivanhoe, through which Bruce Watkins Drive runs, to its west - were not mostly black when the MHD drew up plans for a freeway network for the city. But both had become so by the time the bulldozers started their work, so it doesn't surprise me that it then fell into the "white folks' roads through black folks' neighborhoods" meta-narrative.

I suspect, however, that had the neighborhoods remained mostly white, the residents would have been no happier to see a freeway rammed through them.

My childhood home was destroyed to make room for Bruce Watkins Drive. My parents moved out of the neighborhood in the 60's to avoid condemnation of their property. Not long before I was born, my father's business was destroyed to make room for I-70. Watkins Drive was a disaster for KC. It hung like the sword of Damocles over the corridor for decades before it was ever built and when it was built, it is an ineffective highway/boulevard hybrid that still doesn't work all that well and the lights now serve no purpose at all. Political compromise at its worst.

[Weaubleau]

I guess the stoplights were to keep the neighborhoods intact, which they do absolutely nothing of the sort. In the over 20 years I have lived here, I don't think I have ever seen anyone crossing 71 at those stoplights via foot or bike. It is time to correct the mistake made 20 years ago with the stoplights and turn these into limited access entrances into what is a de facto freeway anyway. The way KC is deveoping over the next 30-40 years will isolate the area east of 71 anyway, as the "good" side of town makes its way east over Troost and toward prospect as we get toward 2050.