With plans still in limbo for building a $110 million trafficway in southeast Lawrence, area officials aren’t about to spend $200,000 to complete a patchwork loop connecting Kansas Highway 10 and U.S. Highway 59.

No matter what a member of Lawrence’s Traffic Safety Commission says.

Officials from Douglas County, the city of Lawrence and Wakarusa Township are putting the brakes on Danny Drungilas’ call for paving two gravel roads southeast of town.

They maintain that the roads, which now carry fewer than 200 vehicles a day, simply aren’t equipped to handle the rush of rolling traffic that such hard-surface routes would attract.

“It’d be the de facto (South Lawrence) Trafficway,” said Keith Browning, the county’s director of public works.

“The new Drag Strip Road,” said Commissioner Bob Johnson, whose district includes the rural area.

Drungilas, a member of the city’s Trafficway Safety Commission since 2003 and organizer for the Prairie Park Neighborhood Assn., wants to change all that. He’s pushing for a government — any government — to finance the application of “chip-and-seal” surfaces to a half-mile section of East 1600 Road, and a mile-long section of North 1250 Road.

The roads would serve as an extension of O’Connell Road, the city street that is being rebuilt to feature three lanes, a bike lane, curbs, gutters, sidewalks and a roundabout. The $2.3 million O’Connell project stretches from Kansas Highway 10 to North 1300 Road, where the gravel road begins.

Drungilas can’t understand how a modern, city street should be created, only to dump its smooth-moving traffic onto a rough rural road.

“Why build a freeway, or a big, beautiful road, and then stop?” he said. “It doesn’t make any sense to me.”

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But the answer really is quite simple, said Ernie Butell, trustee for Wakarusa Township: money. Wakarusa Township is in charge of the roads that would be resurfaced, and doing the work likely would cost up to $220,000.

The township doesn’t have that kind of cash — it spends $500,000 a year caring for all of its 85 miles of roads around Lawrence — and especially not for two gravel streets with a total of three homes alongside them.

‘A quick way out’

Butell noted that the improvements would be installed primarily for city residents and others seeking to cut through the township — whether its from the Prairie Park neighborhood over to Louisiana Street, or all the way from K-10 to South Iowa Street.

“They just want a quick way out,” Butell said. “They want to avoid traffic lights, and to be able to drive 70 miles an hour — but they want to do it on a good road and have somebody else pay for it. And my conscience won’t let me do that. …

“We can’t expect rural people to pay for a city improvement.”

Don’t expect the city to chip in. All city streets have to end somewhere in rural sections of the county, and the folks at City Hall aren’t about to pay for upgrading all of those, too.

“Where do you stop?” said Mike Wildgen, city manager. “You can’t work it that way.”

Inviting accidents

Douglas County officials aren’t championing Drungilas’ idea, either. Craig Weinaug, county administrator, said that making the roads more attractive to drivers could increase the likelihood of accidents.

“Ironically, by paving a road like that, you may end up with a less-safe situation than you have now with a gravel road,” Weinaug said. “It’s just not a good idea.”

Drungilas doesn’t buy such skepticism. He and other Prairie Park residents are organizing a neighborhood meeting next week to discuss the issue; government officials are being invited to attend and join the search for answers.

“We’re working on it,” Drungilas said. “I’m not giving up.”