How long do you think it will take to begin construction on the South Lawrence Trafficway? / LJWorld.com

Asked at Massachusetts Street on May 7, 2008

“I bet that it’s at least five years away. I think the population here has a difficult task in balancing growth and what is beneficial for the environment, and I think a lot of people here are going to fight it until the very end.”

— Holly Sweeney, behavior analyst, rural Lawrence

“I’m guessing they’ll probably try to start before the November elections to avoid any interference by newly elected politicians. I think the people who are pushing for it will use the resources they have to start as soon as possible.”

— Rick Sheridan, college lecturer, Lawrence

“If they have all the permits they need, I’m not sure why they haven’t started. I really wish they would just give up on it and find a better route. There are so many people who are opposed to it.”

— Shay Knudsen, Haskell Indian Nations University junior, Lawrence

“I’m hoping they never will. If people are smart about it, they should be able to file enough lawsuits to prevent it indefinitely.”

— Pearl Martin-Eagle, Free State High School junior, Lawrence

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Topside 5 years ago

I still chuckle at people who really think this will alleviate traffic on 23rd....WAKE UP, that's all students and people shopping!

stuckinthemiddle 5 years ago

blue73harleyand you whine a lot about a lot of things... in my opinion...

looza 5 years ago

build more sidewalks and bike paths. And eat more raisins. That is all.

stuckinthemiddle 5 years ago

the people who think they need this road should pay for it... make it a toll road...

coolmarv 5 years ago

geekin_topekan (Anonymous) says: Please excuse my ignorance on the issue but,when was the sSLT first brought to the table?A year please anyone?At least 20 years ago.

Lawrence will never be considered a "green" city as long they refuse to build the SLT thereby strangling traffic for thousands and thousands of northeast Kansas commuters every day. The greenhouse emissions from 20,000 to 40,000 vehicles idling, starting and stopping, idling , starting and stopping 20 times over-- twice a day just to get through Liberal Paradise Lawrence is many many times more than if those same vehicles cruised around Lawrence through open fields of mud and mosquitoes at 65mph without ever stopping once. Also the wear and tear of the large trucks on 23rd, haskell, 31st, iowa, etc. are the reason the roads all suck. Green city? What a joke!

BigPrune 5 years ago

They better start building it soon since the 4 lane highway from Ottawa will be dumping another 60,000 cars onto our roadways when that road is completed.Run a bulldozer along the route.

snap_pop_no_crackle 5 years ago

MD gets the Golden Fruitcake for best use of the word "coelacanth" in an OTS thread.

dajudge 5 years ago

It will be finished by December 21, 2012.That's my final ruling.

jonas 5 years ago

"Meanwhile, how much additional smog and air pollution have resulted from the extreme congestion on 23rd Street?"Do the same number of cars put out a higher level of pollution if they're grouped closer together?

mtnfreak 5 years ago

Build the SLT already! For the past 20 years, all the environmentalists have been complaining how bad it will be to build the SLT. Meanwhile, how much additional smog and air pollution have resulted from the extreme congestion on 23rd Street? We've probably caused more lung problems in humans because the environmentalists won't allow us to relocate the wetlands and a small frog population nobody ever knew or cared about until the SLT issue. Overall, we've likely caused more harm to the environment and air quality from not building the SLT.

JJE007 5 years ago

"As long as grass grows, wind blows and the sky is blue..."of course..."Sometimes grass don't grow, wind don't blow, and the sky ain't blue" (quotes from -Little Big Man-)Who cares, at this point. Will anyone's nightmare end?

50YearResident 5 years ago

Start Today....Lets get this completed. No more delays because of a few complainers.

BalkansHawk 5 years ago

My oldest son is 14. I wouldn't be surprised if I have some grandchildren who work on this project as a summer job.

BigPrune 5 years ago

....and do it at night.

takeastand 5 years ago

This isn't going to stop all semis and big trucks from driving 23rd street and Iowa Street. I don't know how many are "passing through" but I would assume that some are there for in town deliveries. I would also be careful what you wish for. If drivers aren't stopping in Lawrence, they ain't spending $$$.

RETICENT_IRREVERENT 5 years ago

stuckinthemiddle 5 years ago

blue73harley you've have yourself in a rather messed up situation... in my opinion...

stuckinthemiddle 5 years ago

regardless of what the designated truck route through Lawrence is there are very few semis that drive all the way through town on 23rd street and the semi traffic on Iowa is all most entirely from I 70 and making deliveries along Iowa...and of course this is a generalization... but it is an accurate assessment...maybe some poor sap who has to drive K10 every day could count the semis on K10 so we'd have some specific numbers... when I drive K10 in the middle of the day I don't see but 1 or 2 semis going either way... I do see a lot of much smaller delivery trucks...there just isn't that much semi traffic on K 10 or 23rd street...certainly not enough to whine about...

jonas 5 years ago

blue: "So when traffic is headed to Ottawa and points South they are supposed to drive down 23rd."I think you're making a Huge assumption that there is any traffic headed to Ottawa. For one thing, "headed to" should probably be changed to "pulled inexorably towards." Those few that go are only obeying the physical law of diffusion, in my opinion.

Bone777 5 years ago

As soon as the small pox epidemic...

stuckinthemiddle 5 years ago

and... driving through Lawrence to get to Ottawa? any trucker with half a brain headed to Ottawa from KC is taking I 35...

jonas 5 years ago

KSA: Well, you do probably have a point on the stop-and-go aspect. The rest of your post seems a little exaggerative, though. In regards to the calming circles, are you suggesting that we should be shooting for a town infrastructure that never requires cars to slow down or stop, because that sounds a little dangerous, don't you think? A calming circle or roundabout, if put in the right place (city seems to be batting about .5oo on this if you take Harvard out of the equation, will require less stopping than a 4-way stop sign. So it seems to me. In regards to the environmental impact, I think it's fair to say that the overall effect will still be negative. I think that the initial cost to the swamp, the extra traffic as behaviors compensate for this extra convenience, and the sprawl outwards that this will pretty much inevitably result will end up outweighing the deletion of any extra smog on 23rd street.

stuckinthemiddle 5 years ago

takeastandgood point...the vast mojority of semis on 23rd and Iowa are making deliveries...you really don't see all that many semis on K10... most of them are on I 70...

bd 5 years ago

This town is a joke!Build the stupid road and get the semi's off of Iowa & 23rd. I bet the new 59 HWY will get done first!

just_another_bozo_on_this_bus 5 years ago

Given that the primary purposes of the SLT are to facilitate residential sprawl and create an improved truck route for long-distance, over-the-road truckers, completion of the SLT will quite certainly increase pollution from cars and trucks.

gccs14r 5 years ago

The SLT could have been built 20 years ago if its supporters weren't so dedicated to the wetlands alignment. My guess is that they want to put the highway there so that even if the land is eventually returned to Haskell that it won't be of any use to them.

sunflower_sue 5 years ago

Since the SLT was proposed, I have:said I would never get marriedgotten marriedspit out a couple of kidsdealt with teanage hormonesI think I will deal with my mid-life crisis, babysit grandkids, and move on to taking water-aerobics for senior citizens before the SLT is started.

Uhlrick_Hetfield_III 5 years ago

The real question is how soon the Lawrence PD will begin using it as a revenue source.

stuckinthemiddle 5 years ago

truth is... Lawrence will never be a green city as long as a large portion of it's population chooses to commute to another city 35 miles away... mostly with one or two people in each vehicle...on top of that, a large portion of those people choose the live on the far west side of town...not very smart... really... if you think about it...

stuckinthemiddle 5 years ago

KSA_21_3503 I responded to this same nonsense on the other thread...I'll shorten it here...the property tax that those folks pay doesn't even take care of the city's expense for the new western development and it's upkeep... if the commuters left the only thing that would crumble would be all those over-sized, over priced crap shacks that the commuters live in...

jonas 5 years ago

"And, no, nothing I have said is an exaggeration. On average, It takes 19 minutes to get from Harper to Quivira. On average, it takes 23 minutes to get from Wakarusa to Harper."Yes, one of these is a city street, and one of them is a freeway. This is a very poor comparison. But if we're talking about quick transit time, the only area of the city you could possibly say would get close to a 15 minute increase would be right off of Iowa, and the two connections at Kasold and whatever that one is by Scottsdale. There's still about a two to five minute drive, at the least, from any other connection at the west side of K10, which I am assuming (since now that I think about it, I don't really know) is where the SLT will connect to, and the current city.By the way, when I said sprawl, I meant development sprawl, not traffic sprawl. The gap between the city and the SLT will, eventually, be filled by development. I, personally, view this as inevitable. I can't say that I agree that the problem with start and stop traffic due to lights on 23rd (not to mention Iowa, 6th st, etc) is due to the lack of the SLT, but maybe I misunderstood you. If you meant it was just poor planning, though, then I'm likely to agree with you. There's a lot of poor planning in Lawrence.

geekin_topekan 5 years ago

Please excuse my ignorance on the issue but,when was the sSLT first brought to the table?A year please anyone?

average 5 years ago

Stuckinthemiddle - The numbers you seek already exist.http://www.ksdot.org/burtransplan/maps/CountMaps/Districts/inset07.pdfThe lower number on the state traffic count maps shows "heavy commercial' trucks per average day. If there are though-going semis on 23rd, they're less than 1000. Probably a lot less.That doesn't mean there wouldn't be a lot of semis on the SLT if finished. Particularly with Interstate 49 replacing US-71 between KC and Texarkana/New Orleans, a lot of traffic would be coming from Wal-Mart-land, via 435/K-10/SLT toward Denver to save a few miles and turnpike tolls. This will also be leading to increased road wear and a less pleasant (more semis) commute on K-10.

tcoke 5 years ago

The people that oppose the road should drive down 23rd at 5pm. lawrence is growing and we need this road to help support our economy. Beside it is only grass with water in it. It is not like it is anything of great value.

stuckinthemiddle 5 years ago

averagethanks for the information...and... I think the number of through-going semis on the 23rd is far less than 1,000 a day...and for certain... if the SLT is built there will definitely be more semi traffic on K10... and I'm not sure how that's a good thing for Lawrence residence... particularly those that commute on K10...

jackbinkelman 5 years ago

"If people on the west side didn't have to drive through town to go east" [we wouldn't have to look at the poor people]!!! Ha! It's never going to happen! Why not carpool, drive less, ride a bike, take a bus, WALK! If you are so concerned with traffic in town. Just Pave it over is always the answer!! GAG!!!

idarastar 5 years ago

looza (Anonymous) says:build more sidewalks and bike paths. And eat more raisins. That is all.I second that looza!Although a bike path from the kansas river to the wetlands would be nice! a nice place to eat raisins. :D

WakaJayhawka 5 years ago

okay so wait a second. let me get this right... so our society, which already seems way too dependent on cars and oil has planned to build a highway through the wetlands... i guess the problem of global warming wont be solved with the direction this community seems to be headed in. not only is this completely ignorant but it's also a slap in the face to the Natives in the community. wetlands are suppose to be sacred and we want to destroy this by building a stretch of asphalt and noise through it? plus the traffic in lawrence isn't even that bad. have some damn patience and you'll get where your going eventually.

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