Topeka ? City of Lawrence officials and Leavenworth County residents Thursday voiced opposition to the Kansas Turnpike Authority’s proposed interchange near Tonganoxie.

For the approximately 30 Leavenworth County residents at the meeting, the proposal would create a deathtrap on a feeder county road.

“I don’t want to see a bottom line that is going to kill people,” Julie Downes told the Turnpike Authority.

Lawrence Mayor Boog Highberger and City Commissioner David Schauner attended the meeting, too.

They didn’t speak to the Turnpike Authority, but said the proposed interchange location would hurt Lawrence and Douglas County.

“Putting that road that far east may help Johnson County, but it doesn’t help Lawrence,” Schauner said.

He said based on the safety and traffic flow concerns, the Turnpike Authority should “step back from this project and think it through.”

Mike Johnston, president and chief executive officer of the Turnpike Authority, said plans for the interchange are set.

“This project has been talked about going back into the ’90s, and so far as I know we have never heard one word from anybody in the city of Lawrence expressing a concern,” Johnston said.

The dispute surrounds the Turnpike Authority’s proposal to build a new turnpike interchange at milepost 212 in Leavenworth County. The connecting road would be County Road 1.

Under previous studies, engineers have said the narrow, hilly two-lane road would have to be improved from U.S. Highway 24 in Tonganoxie to Kansas Highway 32 north of Eudora.

But under the plan, Leavenworth County commissioners plan to upgrade only the north portion of the road, from the interchange to Tonganoxie.

Residents along the southern portion of the road were aghast and brought their complaints to the Turnpike Authority, asking the authority to delay plans for the interchange until Leavenworth County commissioners committed to improving the south portion of County Road 1.

But Johnston gave them a letter from the Leavenworth County commissioners that he said he received earlier in the day. In the letter, the commissioners vowed to improve the southern portion of County Road 1.

The residents, however, were not satisfied, saying they had been promised before and nothing has happened.

Meanwhile, Highberger and Schauner said they would work to get the interchange placed closer to Lawrence.

“If I was a Eudora official, I would be terrified about having 10,000 cars pouring through my downtown every day,” Highberger said.

Schauner said aside from the safety issues, the increased traffic would require substantial and expensive road improvements through and around Eudora. He said a better location for the interchange would be one to two miles west of Eudora.