In an effort to reduce the number of impaired drivers on the roads after the game, state troopers will be conducting a RAVE, or Roving Aggressive Violation Enforcement.

The traffic that crawled through Lawrence on Interstate 70 this weekend left Steve Roberts almost out of gas and patience.

“They said to expect delays, but I had no idea,” said Roberts, a Kansas City resident who was on his way back from a day trip to Junction City. “I was going to fill up (at the Lawrence service station). And, I sat down in traffic for 15 minutes and I was wondering, ‘boy, am I going to run out of fuel right here in the construction zone?'”

Luckily for Roberts and the drivers behind him, he made it to the gas station. However, his patience was just about on empty.

“That’s just crazy. They need to have it to four lanes through there. It is just too much traffic,” he said. “It is rush hour and a lot of people want to get home at the end of the day.”

Roberts is among the hordes of motorists frustrated by the traffic jams caused by the reconstruction of three miles of roadway along I-70. The result is two lanes of traffic squeezed down to one in each direction.

A commuter who drives back and forth to Kansas City, Kelly Stewart, said that this summer her morning drive was fine, but the trip home would range from 45 to 90 minutes. While traffic congestion from road work near Interstate 435 was a factor, the construction outside Lawrence didn’t help either.

“On a Friday when it was taking me an hour and half to get home, it wasn’t exactly the way I wanted to start my weekend,” she said.

Stewart, who recently moved to Kansas City to avoid commuting altogether, said at least she wasn’t heading east in the evening rush.

“As far as I could see … it was a standstill, not moving, bumper to bumper,” she said.

Necessary inconvenience

Rex Fleming, project engineer with the Kansas Turnpike Authority, apologizes for the inconvenience.

“But this is a project that needed to be done,” Fleming said. “And our intention is to get it done as quickly as we can to get it back to normal so you can have your normal, nice ride on the turnpike.”

The worst times for traffic delays come around 5 p.m. Fridays as people are heading home from work and others are heading out of town on vacation. Significant backups also have been reported on Thursday evenings and over the weekends.

Fleming has seen traffic backed up to the Lecompton interchange, which is about seven miles before traffic has to narrow down to one lane. And, on days when there are accidents or cars break down blocking traffic, delays can be more than an hour.

To help make the traffic jam a little less painful, Fleming asks that motorists merge early and nicely, stay a safe distance behind the car in front of them and pull off before the construction zone if they suspect car troubles.

“A vehicle broken down at this location causes a lot of problems,” Fleming said.

50-year lifespan

The $23.2 million project that is causing all the traffic backup replaces 50-year-old concrete road with one that has a 10-inch rock base covered with 18 inches of asphalt.

“It served its life well. And it got to the point where it was breaking up underneath the surface and causing potholes,” Fleming said of the old road. “So it was time for us to come in and take out the whole pavement and rebuild it from the dirt all the way back up.”

The project is in two phases. By the end of November, the KTA expects to be finished with rebuilding the road from the East Lawrence interchange to just west of the Lawrence service area.

Next spring, KTA will start on the next phase of the project, reconstructing the road for another three miles east of the service station. Drivers should expect to see one-lane traffic in each direction again.

The total 6-mile stretch is the last piece of the turnpike that has the original road from the highway’s construction back in the 1950s.

Last week, bulldozers, trackhoes, maintainers and scrapers moved up and down in what had been the westbound lane.

In reconstructing the road, the old concrete is pulverized, removed from the road and piled on the side. Work crews then make sure the original rock bed is solid and remove any water that has collected underneath the road over the past five decades. Next, the pulverized concrete is put back in place to form a 10-inch rock base. And then, 18 inches of asphalt is layered on top.

The end result is a “smoother ride” that Fleming said should be easier to maintain and last another 50 years. That end result, he thinks, is worth the wait in traffic.

“It is going to be nice black asphalt and it will be the same two lanes you had before and the same shoulder. It just won’t have as many potholes,” Fleming said.