ROBERT PIERCE
• Leader & Times
While county road projects continue in Seward County, so too will work on state and federal highways, and some local leaders recently attended the listening session regarding new ideas for project scoring hosted by the Kansas Department of Transportation in Dodge City.
Among those attending were Seward County Administrator April Warden and Commission Chairman Scott Carr, and both gave some of their thoughts about the meeting at the commission’s most recent town hall meeting in mid-December 2024.
Warden said while KDOT hosts local consults in many communities throughout the Sunflower State, the Dodge City event focused on project scoring rather than actual projects, something she appreciated, as local consults, she said, tend to get somewhat territorial.
“Highway 54 is very important to us,” she said. “Highway 83 is very important to the Garden City and Scott City area. They tried to keep us focused on the project scoring matrix.”
KDOT local consults typically take place in odd years, with one scheduled for this year in Liberal, and Carr said because consults tend to get territorial, feelings can get hurt, as they did with a recent consult in Garden City.
“We went up there to Garden City in January of last year,” he said. “A lot of us showed up from Seward County, the City of Liberal, and we put a good front for all of it. I think Garden City got hurt over that. They were actually supposed to go out and do a study on the Southwest Kansas corridor, but they’ve never done it. That was supposed to be through KDOT.”
Warden said a company had been hired to do that study, but no updates had been given as to when the study would start.
Carr and Warden said the local group was not being loud in Garden City at the consult.
“We just had a show of people,” Carr said.
“We were very prepared, and we had facts,” Warden said. “I don’t think they were used to us showing up like that.”
Seward County is part of KDOT’s District Six, and Warden said local leaders reached out to officials in other areas that utilize Hwy. 54 to talk about possible partnerships.
“We need to put a coalition together and show it’s a win-win for us even if just one of the other districts along Highway 54 gets some of the four lane or some of the longer passing lanes,” she said. “They thought we’d really done our homework and gone out and talked to Plains, Meade, Fowler all the way to Pratt.”
Warden said people in those communities likewise showed up at their local consults to let KDOT know they were working with Southwest Kansas.
“This is a win for us if you make the changes along Highway 54 all the way from Liberal to Wichita,” she said of what leaders in other areas of the state said when partnerships were discussed.
Warden said those on hand for the listening session also talked about what they did and did not like about the local consult experience.
“I think it was unanimous having them come out and do local consults is great because they’re coming out and traveling the roads and looking at what we’re saying the issues,” she said. “You break into small groups. You really get to listen to people, and you have those one-on-one conversations with KDOT.”
Warden said part of what local leaders found difficult about the consults was getting project plans only 24 hours before the meeting.
“It would’ve been easier to have those and have more time to study those and to be able to have those discussions with stakeholders and different businesses had we had that information sooner,” she said. “They did listen to us when we said we need more transparency.”
Because of this, Warden said KDOT has now started a debriefing.
“If one of your projects is not chosen, they will do a debriefing if you request it and tell you why your project wasn’t chosen, how they feel you could do things differently or resubmit your information later on,” she said. “It’s only by request.”
Part of what is not working, Warden said, is the current project scoring matrix, and as part of this, local leaders talked about the value of freight in Southwest Kansas.
“We are producing a lot of raw input for statewide economic performance as a whole, and they’re not giving us a whole lot of credit for that out here,” she said. “We talked about talked about truck transport.”
Warden talked about some of the means used to transport product out of Southwest Kansas.
“Some of our exports are going out by rail,” she said. “Also, the feed and cattle are transported on trucks. The process feed goes out. Look at the amount of truck traffic we have in our area that stays right here on a daily basis that is utilizing those roads, but they’re not considered in the overall counts on stuff. Those trucks are going in and out of here all day, whether it be the dairies, the ethanol plant, or National Beef.”
Warden said a new concept KDOT wants local officials to consider is resiliency or the ability to bounce back after weather and other unexpected events.
“Everybody’s definition of resiliency’s a little bit different,” she said. “There was a lot of discussion on equity and how they need to look at all areas of the state, and while they have a very limited budget, like all government agencies do, and we have to consider a budget, they need to really look at spreading that money throughout the state and not just hitting certain areas with that.”
Others attending the listening session were from Dodge City and Garden City, and Warden said there was also representation from Ashland. She added some at the event brought up the high Hispanic population in Southwest Kansas.
“Finney County and Garden City feel they’re not accommodating the services those people need and they don’t have the accessibility to the critical resources they need and they’re at a disadvantage,” she said. “I would not say Seward County took that avenue, but Garden City was very adamant about that.”
Warden said another topic of discussion at the listening session was sustainability, primarily supporting and sustaining the area’s current highway system and new infrastructure.
“Then they asked us to take a vote on what was important to us about sustainability, equity and resiliency,” she said. “People were saying how resiliency and sustainability are so widespread. They asked us to trust the process. They’re going to be gathering more information and coming back to us in February with the results of some of these meetings.”
Likewise, Warden said much of the talk at the listening session centered on safety.
“They talked a lot about the congestion from truck traffic, and they talked a lot about historical investments and what we’ve done in the past and where we may have missed the mark in considering that in the future,” she said.
Overall, Warden said local leaders sent a message of a needed focus on scoring for rural areas, not just urban areas.
“The good news is they were going to do another KDOT local consult, and it’s scheduled to be right here in Liberal, Seward County again in 2025,” she said. “It will be in October. We were super excited to hear that again.”
Carr emphasized the need for more four laning in the area.
“We have 60 percent of the truck traffic, and we only have 20 percent of the four-lane highways out in Southwest Kansas,” he said.
Commissioner Presephoni Fuller did say, though, the completed four-lane projects in the region have somewhat reduced stress levels.
“You think about six, seven trucks behind you, and you can’t go around,” she said. “You have to wait, and they have our higher ups fly in and not drive in so they can experience that. I’d like to see them do that a little bit more.”
With state officials flying into Southwest Kansas rather than driving, Fuller said they do not see what area residents see such as multiple accidents and the need to pull over.
“Trucks can’t stop on a dime,” she said. “Because we have rails, the airways and the highway, so much comes through here. I think it’s worth our weight in gold when they do have consults, the listening sessions, we show up in force. It doesn’t just benefit Seward County, but surrounding counties. That traffic is brutal to all of us.”
