KSHB 41 reporter Tod Palmer covers sports business and eastern Jackson County, including Independence. Share your story idea with Tod.
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For approaching seven years, the Kentucky Road bridge over Rock Creek in western Independence has been closed.
I’m KSHB 41 News Independence Reporter Tod Palmer and I visited the neighborhood Thursday about the lengthy closure and if they’re glad it’s finally slated for repair.
One resident told me the bridge closure has been a significant annoyance, but another neighbor said she’d just as soon it never reopen.
Lonnie Hayes has lived in the Fairmount Neighborhood, which includes the closed bridge, for most of his life and can’t wait for it to get fixed.
“You just turned it into a dead end-community and we have to go like three other different ways to get out of here,” Hayes said.
Without the bridge, it’s impossible to exit Hayes’ neighborhood west toward US 24.
“It’s been going on way too long,” Independence City Councilman John Perkins said.
Hayes said the closure has been inconvenient.
“When I can't get out and I have to have food delivered or something, Google Maps is still trying to tell them that road’s open and they get lost,” he said.
It’s been dirty, attracting dumping along a spillway and near the cement barriers blocking traffic from the bridge.
“It's all trash down there now and people don't care,” Hayes said. “They're just throwing stuff down there.”
But it’s also been potentially dangerous — not only because the only way out of the neighborhood is now uphill with culverts on both sides, a hazard in icy conditions — but because it delays emergency vehicles.
“It needs to be open for emergency vehicles,” Hayes said. “I've had ambulances tell me, ‘We're on our way still.’ When I had to pick up my little 3-year-old because he had high fever, he (the ambulance driver) said, ‘We're gonna have to go around trains and things.’”
Trains that criss-cross the tracks stop near that stretch of Kentucky Road occasionally, blocking access and forcing residents to take lengthy detours — or preventing emergency responders from reaching the area.
Usually, the trains stop short of Kentucky Road, because the bridge is next to a water treatment facility, to which the city needs to maintain access.
But not everyone in the Fairmount Neighborhood wants the bridge fixed.
Christa Anderson, who lives in the same neighborhood as Hayes, said the bridge closure has tamped down sketchy foot traffic, wandering off US 24.
“We had a lot of vagrants and people coming back there setting fires right there, trying to kind of set up camp,” she said. “On top of that, you would get high-speed chases coming through here in the middle of the night.”
With the bridge closed, such chases aren’t common anymore — and Anderson doesn’t miss them.
“When everybody knows that’s open, it becomes a way to go around and beat traffic, to avoid law enforcement,” she said. “Unfortunately, when that bridge is open, it actually opens up to people coming into the neighborhood.”
It created hazards for children playing in the neighborhood, but Anderson knows it will reopen eventually, especially after U.S. Rep. Emmanuel Cleaver II secured $1.2 million to fix the bridge.
“We’ll be able to adjust, but they can take their time,” Anderson said of getting the bridge fixed. “They can work on some potholes and some other things that can be fixed. We’ll take that over the bridge. The bridge can wait.”
Independence voters approved a $55 million bond issue earmarked for infrastructure improvements last year, which included $15 million to replace or repair 15 city-owned bridges.
RELATED | Independence voters approve $55M transportation bonds
Construction on the first two projects — the Kentucky Road bridge over Mill Creek and the Crysler Avenue bridge at Lexington Avenue — using that bond money will begin next month, while the bridge over Rock Creek remains in the design phase.
“It is nice to get these projects moving forward, so that we can show the citizens that what they have voted for in the general-obligation bond is being worked on,” Perkins said.
Independence also must finalize an agreement with Kansas City, Missouri, which owns half of the bridge, to take it over before construction can begin.
“We'll take it over forever, so there's never any dispute from Kansas City, who is in charge of the bridge going forward,” Perkins said.
Independence is working to step up the next set of bridges for the design and bidding.
City officials said the federal dollars allocated for the Rock Creek bridge will free up $1.2 million in bond funding to accelerate plans for future replacements and repairs.
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