Vic Beda sees the problems every day from the cab of his 18-wheel, $123,000 rig.

But taking one look at Midland Junction north of Lawrence — the crowded conflagration of U.S. Highway 24-59, Wellman Road and North 2000 Road in front of a wide-open parking lot for a general store — had the trucker from Florida shaking his head with resigned frustration.

Learning that the area saw two fatality accidents and another serious injury crash last year didn’t surprise him at all. But watching as a dozen Douglas County officials piled out of a van, donned reflective vests and scanned the intersection early Thursday morning in search of safety solutions, Beda soon found himself putting the brakes on any governmental optimism.

“People have been planning for years and years to come up with answers,” said Beda, who’s been trucking 26 years without an accident. “There’s a lot of problems out there to fix, but it all comes down to the almighty dollar.”

County commissioners and members of the Traffic Safety Advisory Committee aren’t about to give up hope, as they consider a variety of options that could make the intersection safer.

Among them:

• Prohibit parking alongside the edge of U.S. 24-59, a two-lane highway that carries thousands of vehicles a day. The cars and trucks at times are obscured by delivery vehicles and other automobiles at the Midland Farm Store, a longtime fixture at the intersection.
• Add curbs to the store’s parking lot, limiting access points to the highway. The gravel lot currently is wide open, injecting uncertainty into the minds of drivers leaving the lot or otherwise passing by.
• Acquire portions of fields along the north side of the intersection, to prevent corn stalks from obstructing views for drivers waiting to turn onto the highway.


Craig Weinaug, Douglas County administrator, and Andrew Morrow, a county engineer and member of the county's Traffic Safety Advisory Committee, visit Midland Junction, an intersection north of Lawrence that has warranted the concern of the committee.

• Relocate the store’s roadside pole sign and gasoline pumps, which can clog sight lines for drivers.

Ideas plentiful

Such ideas were among the many discussed in the store’s parking lot Thursday morning, as Douglas County commissioners and members of the county’s Traffic Safety Advisory Committee embarked on a three-hour tour of county roads.

They reached no concrete decisions, concluding only that they needed to consult with officials from the Kansas Department of Transportation, Grant Township, neighboring property owners and others affected by the junction’s layout and operations before laying a path for change.

“We need to look at all the information and decide what is most important for the safety of everyone in the community,” said Andrew Morrow, a county engineer and member of the advisory committee.

Trip conclusions

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Other stops on the group’s tour led to several unofficial conclusions:

• A rebuilt stretch of County Road 1029, from the Farmer’s Turnpike to Lecompton, offers a “model” for what all of the county’s paved roads should look like, Commissioner Bob Johnson said: a smooth surface featuring wide shoulders, shallow hills and gentle slopes for roadside ditches. But officials acknowledged that ordering such work likely would cost more than $100 million.
• An upcoming replacement of the Kasold Drive bridge across the Kansas Turnpike will do more than widen it from two to four lanes and include bike lanes. It also will raise the profile of the bridge by five feet.
• East 1600 Road, the southern extension of O’Connell Road, likely shouldn’t be upgraded from its gravel surface to a chip-and-seal roadway, despite the city of Lawrence’s ongoing overhaul of O’Connell south from Kansas Highway 10. The reason? Making the gravel road more conducive to traffic likely would draw too much traffic, and at high speeds, to make the connection with North 1300 Road a “de facto trafficway,” said Keith Browning, county engineer, committee chair and director of public works.