photo by: Nick Gerik

City offices, including Municipal Court and Planning and Development Services, are pictured at 1 Riverfront Plaza, Monday, April 15, 2019.

The Lawrence-Douglas County Metropolitan Planning Organization is looking for public comment on an updated Regional Pedestrian Plan for Eudora, Baldwin City and Lecompton.

The MPO on Monday announced the start of that 30-day public comment period, which will extend through Tuesday, Feb. 20. The draft plan will go to the MPO Policy Board for approval on March 21. Between now and Feb. 20, comments can be provided via email to mpo@lawrenceks.org. Written comments can be mailed to the Lawrence-Douglas County Metropolitan Planning Office, PO Box 708, Lawrence, KS, 66044.

According to pedestrian planning information available on the City of Lawrence’s website, the updated Regional Pedestrian Plan was developed through a public participation process that gathered feedback from Eudora, Baldwin City and Lecompton residents during 2021 and 2022, but due to staff turnover was not completed until this year. It’s the first update to the plan since it was adopted in 2016.

One major difference between the updated plan and the original one is that the 2016 plan included all of the cities in Douglas County. The new draft establishes unique recommendations for Eudora, Baldwin City and Lecompton, allowing Lawrence to stick to its own individual plan adopted in 2022.

The draft plan notes that it enables city staff to make consistent decisions to improve the pedestrian environment by setting the stage for policy discussion, helping to protect streets with developed pedestrian infrastructure, and prioritizing streets with underdeveloped pedestrian infrastructure for future upgrades.

“The recommendations in this document aim to focus investment in pedestrian infrastructure so that the network is less fragmented,” the draft plan reads. “… The ultimate goal is to have a complete citywide system of quality pedestrian infrastructure paired with policies and programs that encourage more people to walk.”

To that end, the document includes some details about existing conditions in Eudora, Baldwin City and Lecompton, as well as a set of recommendations that broadly apply to all three cities.

Eudora

The existing sidewalk network in Eudora, according to the draft plan, mostly exists along newer neighborhoods and on some streets around downtown. The city lacks sidewalks on one or both sides of many streets but has made progress in recent years to complete sidewalks. There are 30 miles of “missing sidewalk” — areas where sidewalks don’t exist, forcing pedestrians to either walk in the street or across yards — in Eudora, compared to 23 miles of sidewalk and 0.6 miles of shared-use paths.

The draft plan includes a “high-level cost estimate” for what it would take to construct sidewalks along the entirety of the missing area in Eudora, not accounting for design and inspection costs or future inflation. Those costs could range from $7 million to $17 million.

Baldwin City

The existing sidewalk network in Baldwin City is largely concentrated around downtown and Baker University, with some additional routes to public schools. Like Eudora, the city lacks sidewalks on one or both sides of many streets. Unlike Eudora, though, Baldwin City’s areas with missing sidewalks — 25 miles — are a little closer to even with the amount of existing sidewalk and shared-use paths, which combine for around 21.3 miles.

Baldwin City also has one recommendation the other two cities do not: pursuing the construction of the Maple Leaf Trail, a shared-use path connecting Baldwin City to Ottawa, which is about 16.6 miles away in Franklin County. According to the draft plan, the path would ultimately provide access to both the Flint Hills Nature Trail and the Prairie Spirit Rail Trail, and it’s set to begin construction this year. The first phase, between Elm Street and High Street in Baldwin City, is being constructed in 2024, and a second phase of construction from High Street to North 200 Road was awarded funding for construction in 2024 as well.

Like Eudora’s section of the plan, Baldwin City’s also includes a high-level cost estimate for constructing the missing sidewalk mileage. But this city’s estimated cost range is double that of Eudora’s — anywhere from $15 million to $36 million.

Lecompton

According to the draft plan, Lecompton’s small size, historic development patterns and rural nature mean there is a limited sidewalk network in town. This city, too, lacks sidewalks on one or both sides of many streets, but it’s poised to make “significant progress” with the pending Lecompton Sidewalk Loop project. That project will add 1.75 miles of new sidewalk and replace existing sidewalk that’s in poor condition.

That additional sidewalk, pending installation, is included in the city’s inventory of 7.75 miles of existing sidewalk, compared to 5.25 miles of missing sidewalk.

The high-level cost estimate for constructing missing sidewalks in Lecompton is much lower compared to the other two regional cities. For Lecompton, costs would range anywhere from $3.2 million to $7.5 million.

Recommendations for all three cities

• Leverage Safe Routes to School funding to add more routes or address maintenance issues along existing routes. The Safe Routes to School plan began as an initiative of the Lawrence-Douglas County health department, the Lawrence school district, the City of Lawrence and the Lawrence-Douglas County Metropolitan Planning Organization in 2014, but both Eudora and Baldwin City have since adopted their own plans. In Lecompton’s case, the draft plan suggests applying for Safe Routes to School funding through the Kansas Department of Transportation.

• Adopt design standards and policies that support walkability, such as zoning regulations requiring sidewalks to connect from the public right-of-way to public building entrances, or subdivision standards that require an interconnected network of streets and sidewalks rather than encouraging the use of streets with multiple curves and cul-de-sacs.

• Improve pedestrian safety and comfort at locations with real and perceived risk. The draft plan recommends that Baldwin City continue to partner with Lawrence and Eudora to complete a regional Vision Zero Safety Action Plan establishing a road map for how the communities can eliminate traffic deaths and serious injuries on their streets. The draft plan also suggests implementing a blanket residential speed limit of 20 mph throughout each city as a means of traffic calming, and implementing other speed management tools such as raised crosswalks where needed.

• Track and measure the progress of each city’s pedestrian network, amenities and programming. The draft plan suggests that each city work together with the Metropolitan Planning Organization to track miles of sidewalk construction and gap infill, sidewalk maintenance, shared-use path construction and more. The plan maintains that tracking cost, location and program data for pedestrian improvements will demonstrate the progress the cities are making on the pedestrian environment and where more work needs to be done to further address the region’s focus areas.

• Target resources to routes on each city’s “Priority Network.” The Priority Networks provide a detailed map of each city’s existing, missing and pending sidewalks. The priority paths are highlighted on those maps and largely concentrate on areas where sidewalk is missing entirely or is not present along one side of a roadway. For Lecompton, for example, the plan notes that the pedestrian priority network identified in the 2016 Regional Pedestrian Plan focused on providing the most people with access to the most parts of town — particularly to schools, stores and other landmark destinations.

• Create or support encouragement programs that help to create an awareness of pedestrian issues and the benefits of walking. That could include events and initiatives like art walks, workplace wellness programs, walking route maps or way-finding signage and walking clubs.