Speaker numbers apply only to this recording.
The Kansas City, Missouri, City Council held a business session on October 8, 2026, to approve prior meeting minutes, welcome the new public works director, Jason Waldron, and hear an update from the Missouri Department of Transportation (MODOT) on the Improving Interstate 70 project, including plans for an extended closure of I-70 in 2027. No agenda or minutes were available for this meeting; this summary is based on the meeting transcript.
Let's get started. Welcome to business session for uh October 8th, 2026. First item is approval of minutes for business session from September 24. Is there a motion? So moved. Second. Moved and second at all in favor indicate by saying aye. Aye. Aye. All opposed. The motion passes. I'll start because I haven't seen them in business session yet either. We have a new director of public works, uh, Jason the King Waldron. Uh so congratulations and uh glad to have you with us. Our presentation today is improving Interstate 70. Our friends from the Missouri Department of Transportation are with us to talk about closure. And new beginnings, perhaps. Well, let me first um start by saying thank you for giving me this opportunity to talk about this project that isn't just gonna have an important city impact but also a regional um impact to Kansas City. But once we get through it, we believe it will be a positive impact. Um so I'm gonna give you kind of the what we've done so far, um, some you know, the progress of the project and then what's coming up next year, which if we've done our job, you're kind of aware of what's coming up next year. So the improved I-70 Kansas City project really is um focusing on the improv on the I-70 corridor. Um, generally, we're saying from the stadiums to downtown, but the improvements themselves will happen from Manchester all the way to the Paseo. And if you look at this corridor, this is a corridor that's 60 years old and is really at the end of its lifespan. So, since we're looking at this corridor right now, uh, and you know, 105,000 cars a day drive this corridor. It's not one thing that we're trying to solve. There's actually multiple different things that we have to um look at as a part of this project. So the first thing that we're looking at is outdated geometrics. So, you know, that is um narrow shoulders and um low vertical clearances, and you can see the picture there at the Jackson Curve with the flashing yellow signs telling everyone to drive 45 miles per hour, and we're lucky if they're driving 55 miles per hour. So the geometrics met the standards of the 1960s when this was built, but really needs to be updated to the standards of today. The second thing, so geometrics, the second thing is um poor bridges and pavement. So we have um, for example, bridges that were designed for 50 years, and while they're open, they're safe to drive across, but they are um 60 years old at this point and really are in need of um replacement. The other thing I would note, um, kind of unique to this project that I think is really pertinent to the um city is you know, being from MODOT, we think about bridges and highways, but this also gives us an opportunity to look at all the infrastructure in the corridor. And so that has given us a great opportunity to partner with KCMO sewer and the water groups to look at replacing additional infrastructure while we've got these roads torn up and the um and the bridges you know closed and the roads closed. We can come in here and not just address um bridges and pavement but other infrastructure as well. And so I really want to commend and I appreciate all the work that the city staff has done in getting us to that point. So the third item there is the congestion. So if you're familiar with um I-70 in the morning or in the evening, you've seen um the cars backed up. Um every day uh um it's something that the the city is dealing with as you know, commuters, the the community, the commuters and the regional traffic's driving through. Um and it doesn't just magically fix itself. Our studies show in 20 years it's only gonna get worse. And so that's the third item that needs to be addressed. And then kind of related to the congestion, is we have a history of crashes along the corridor. And if you look at the rate of those crashes, it's actually higher than uh interstate of this type. But I think the other thing that MODOT is really paying attention to is we recognize we have communities on both sides of the interstate here, and we actually have a history of pedestrian fatalities that have occurred along the interstate where people are choosing to cross six lanes of interstate just to get from one side to the other. And so these four things are really showing the current condition and what we need to address as a part of it. So every design bill project at MODOT has a certain um goals that are laid out. These are set in priority order.