Safety, mobility improvements on the way for downtown Parkville

Yahoo

15-02-2025

PARKVILLE, Mo. — Improvements to downtown Parkville could be happening in the near future. The city is starting the next phase of its Redefine Route 9 project, which predominantly involves the downtown area.
A map for the project shows the work will start at the entrance to Park University and go west to 4th Street and from the downtown triangle along 1st Street to Mill Street and west to S. Crooked Road.
The project will improve safety and mobility for pedestrians and vehicles. Improvements will include new crosswalks, a traffic signal, more turning lanes, and street lighting.
Others, like The Craic owner Pat O'Reilly, want to see parking addressed.
'Whatever the city can do to improve the parking would make it more inviting for people to come down,' he said.
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Meanwhile, visitors like Diane Griffith who walk up and down Main Street want to see improvements to the crosswalk, which can be tricky to cross as some cars are trying to go east to Kansas City or west towards Leavenworth.
'It's probably the most challenging part because we have two major intersections that get a lot of pedestrian traffic as well as vehicle traffic,' said Parkville Mayor Dean Katerndahl.
'This is a real bottleneck for pedestrians and it's dangerous because people are coming from several directions at once.'
To give your input, the city has an that will be up until Friday, February 21. Residents can also attend a public meeting at City Hall on Monday, March 10, which is when engineers will introduce three to four improvement plans. A final decision will not be made until later this year.
'This is a big project. It better do something substantial and not just nibble at the edges,' said the mayor about those who want to see the eight-to-nine million dollars actually be put to good use.
Other improvements are already in the works for the downtown area but are not related to this project. Those include installing wayside horns to minimize train noise, rail crossings for pedestrians, creating a new farmer's market, and ADA improvements.
'Our goal is that in three to four years this will be, as charming as it is now, it'll even more of a destination for people to come to our downtown.'
Once a final plan is decided upon, the goal is to start construction in 2026 and end in 2028.
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