Local and state agencies to work together on U.S. 69 corridor

Fort Scott, Kan. â€" Local government officials have taken the next step in the process of determining the impact that the completed U.S. Highway 69 four-lane freeway will have on Fort Scott and the region.

During a meeting on Monday at Fort Scott City Hall, the Bourbon County Commission, the Fort Scott City Commission, and representatives from the Kansas Department of Transpor-tation signed an agreement to work together in the management and alignment of the U.S. 69 corridor.

The meeting was not conducted to discuss immediate funding needs for a corridor study or a funding timeline, but simply to get an agreement on the table concerning the corridor, Bourbon County Commissioner Bill Brittain said.

“Today, this doesn’t commit any funds, this just gets everyone together, then we can discuss the funding at a future meeting,” he said.

The Monday meeting was one in a series of meetings officials have conducted in recent months concerning the highway corridor, and the culmination of much work done in past years, U.S. Highway 69 Association president Dean Mann, who also attended the meeting, said.

The group also agreed to the creation of a steering committee â€" one representative from each party in the agreement â€" whose members will also design a master plan to manage the corridor, including improvements, anticipated growth in traffic volume, economic development needs, and safe and efficient access to the highway.

The committee will also work on the scope of the project and to make sure other governmental entities, such as Crawford County, are on board with the local study and bypass alignment to avoid problems down the road, Mann said at the meeting.

In the agreement, the corridor is defined as the segment of U.S. 69 starting at and including the north interchange with U.S. Highway 54, proceeding south about 13 miles. The corridor also includes the area about one half mile from the highway on both sides, as well as Margrave and Horton streets, terminating at the Bourbon and Crawford County line.

Mann said the first goal is to address how additional traffic from the four-lane running through and around Fort Scott will affect local traffic, and how the current corridor will handle added traffic in the future.

“What we’re trying to find out is what we are going to do with the extra traffic,” Mann said. “PSU continues to grow, they’re adding gaming casinos to the south. There are going to be more travelers.”

The goal of the highway association is to eventually see that the highway becomes a fully controlled access four-lane highway from Kansas City, Mo., south to U.S. Interstate 44 in Oklahoma. The portion of the highway running from Kansas City to Fort Scott is expected to be completed in late 2009.

Mann said the next step in the process will be for the city and county to submit a request for proposal to conduct a study analyzing aspects of the corridor to several consulting firms. It could take about two to three months for such a study to begin, and about 18 months to complete the study, Mann said.

KDOT has agreed to fund 65 percent of the cost of the study, while the city and county will jointly share the remaining 35 percent and pay the cost over a two-to-three year budget period. The study could cost between $300,000 and $350,000, Mann said.

There are no financial obligations at this time for either the city or county, KDOT Southeast Kansas District Engineer Mike Stringer said at the Monday meeting.

The study will gauge whether the current highway alignment will work, or if a committee needs to exlore another study, officials said.

The current Comprehen-sive Transportation Plan that the Kansas Legislature designed in 1999 will run its course in 2009. Lawmakers intend to begin addressing the funding of a new CTP in the new legislative session that begins in January, and officials want the U.S. 69 project to be part of that plan, Mann said.

“We want to make sure our project is on the table to be completed,” he said.

A $45 million project to expand U.S. 69 to a four-lane freeway from Fort Scott north to Louisburg, expected to be completed by the end of the year, is part of the original $13 billion CTP that began in 1999.

About a year ago, then-Fort Scott city manager Richard Nienstedt issued a request that KDOT start a corridor study of U.S. 69 from the north city limits of Fort Scott to the Bourbon and Crawford county line.

Crawford County has already chosen its corridor for the future U.S. 69 bypass, and now Bourbon and Cherokee counties need to begin the same process, officials said.