ROBERT PIERCE
• Leader & Times
Transportation is a critical need everywhere, and in Southwest Kansas, some headway has been made with some of the area’s highways.
Much of that work concerns U.S. Highway 54 and the ongoing projects to create four lanes from Wichita to El Paso, Texas.
U.S. Highway 83 too is a critical corridor for Western Kansas serving a variety of industries including agriculture and energy.
Officials with the Kansas Department of Transportation said expanding transportation opportunities along the Hwy. 83 corridor will improve economic productivity, as well as the safe and efficient movement of agriculture products and other freight, benefiting everyone who travels on the corridor.
The expansion of Hwy. 83 was recently discussed at the 83 Corridor Summit in Garden City, and among those in attendance was Seward County Commission Chairman Scott Carr.
Some of the talk at the summit concerned a grant the City of Garden City recently received for $1.36 million from KDOT’s Safe Streets and Roads for All (SS4A), and along with Garden City, the communities of Liberal, Sublette, Scott City and Oakley were part of a study of roads in Western Kansas, which Carr said helped Garden City get the grant money.
Carr added recent local consult meetings with KDOT concerning Hwy. 54 woke leaders in communities along Hwy. 83 to the need for work on that highway.
“We caught them off guard with that,” he said. “That’s when this coalition for 83 kicked in gear.”
Carr said maps were available at the summit that demonstrated where many accidents have taken place, including bicycle, pedestrian and fatality accidents, and much of the information about fatalities concerned those taking place in town.
Traffic flow and overturn crashes on Hwy. 83 were also looked at, but Carr said for those in Seward County, accidents at locations such as the junction of Hwy. 83 and Hwy. 54 and the intersection of Tucker Road and U.S.-83 are more important.
“They did fatalities and injuries,” he said. “I reminded them most of our problem is on 54, not 83. They didn’t like to hear that.”
KDOT leaders updated summit attendees about work being done on Hwy. 83, and in Seward County, that was primarily passing lanes and extended turn lanes.
“They did mention a lot about making those turn lanes like they did in Seward County and acceleration lanes much longer,” Carr said. “The further north you go, you don’t get those type of lanes. In Seward County, we’ve got some of those nice turning lanes on 54 and 83.”
Carr estimated about 10 people from Finney County were in attendance, with a few from Scott County and Oakley, but he was the only audience member from Liberal.
“Hopefully, we’ll get better attendance at that next time,” he said. “It was still neat to be present at that.”
The summit also included two breakout sessions addressing U.S.-83’s ties to economic development and population growth.
“What are the new businesses coming into the area like the dairies or the new beef processing plant there in Garden City – Empirical Foods?” Carr said. “Education, Garden City had people there from their school district.”
Summit leaders asked those in attendance to look at the next 20 years for Hwy. 83.
“We were supposed to come up with ideas of how does 83 impact our community,” he said.
Agriculture makes up a large amount of the traffic on Hwy. 83, and Carr said Garden City’s economic director and statistician, who is also a city commissioner in that town, was in attendance as well.
At KDOT’s local consult meeting, those in attendance were given a list of factors and were asked to decide what type of factor it was.
“Is it an economic factor?” Carr said. “Is it a traffic factor? They had these four radar bubbles.”
Carr said the Garden City commissioner claimed traffic from Scott City, about 30 miles to the north of Garden City, is under reported.
“He was trying to make a case for Scott City’s truck traffic being bigger than it is,” he said. “Highway 83 between Scott and Garden falls off to half of what it is from Garden to Liberal. He’s trying to bump up Scott City.”
Carr said this was done by looking at state numbers, not just those from Garden City.
“The main focus was to look at the corridor as a whole, and another item that came up in the breakout is there needs to be a freight corridor between I-70 and I-40,” he said. “I told them we already have a freight corridor from Liberal to I-40 being four laned through the Oklahoma Panhandle, Stratford, and it’s four laned all the way down to I-40. They’re trying to push it south of Liberal that it needs to be four laned. It’s already a two plus one passing lane like it is from Texhoma to Stratford.”
Garden City leaders, Carr said, want four laning on Hwy. 83 similar to what is being done on Hwy. 54.
“There was an outside consulting engineer who works for various counties, and he said a two plus one passing lane situation would hinder our truck traffic on 83,” he said.
Carr said conversation likewise centered around keeping bicyclists and pedestrians safe on roads and streets.
“What do we do in town to protect bicyclists, pedestrians?” he said. “Is it extra signage we need, or is it bicycle lanes?”
Carr said he does feel Scott City does have a case for a bypass.
“Where does all their truck traffic go?” he said. “It splits that school down Main Street. They’ve got school children with trucks all day long going down their Main Street at 20 mph. They have a case. There’s some concern there.”
While Garden City does already have a bypass, Carr too felt that community had a case for a second bypass.
“They have split the east side versus the west side of Garden City over by Menards and all the meat housing,” he said. “That’s become a problem for them as well.”
In Seward County, Carr said safety problems primarily concern Southwestern Heights High School near the Meade County line.
“That’s where we’ve asked KDOT to work between Plains, Kismet,” he said. “At Southwestern Heights, how do we improve safety there?”
As for what is being done on Hwy., 83, Carr said plans are in place to do some passing lanes between Garden City and Sublette and possibly south of Sublette.
“In 2027, we’re supposed to get a new bridge on North 83,” he said. “The Cimarron bridge will be replaced. They haven’t announced that yet. It’ll have shoulders like the bridges out on 54. I don’t think we’ll get a lot on 83 in Seward County unless we get another passing lane. There’s supposed to be some passing lanes between Liberal and Sublette north of the county line.”
As for looking 20 years into the future for U.S.-83, Carr said with the Six Points intersection in Liberal looking at nearly 10 years for completion of a project, that and other factors make it difficult to foresee what will happen in the next 20 years.
“Looking in the future, you need to look at do we need to be accommodating electric cars on the highways at that point,” he said. “Is there going to be autonomous trucking at that point? If you’re looking out to 20, 30 years, is it going to be to that point yet?”
Carr said talk about the use of electric vehicles came up as well, and summit attendees were told by KDOT leaders some of the easier parts of improving Hwy. 83 will be addressed by the SS4A grant first. This include signage.
“Now we have fiber with IdeaTek all the way up to Scott City or Oakley,” he said. “They can do some things with fiber out on the highway with some electronic signage. They can also do an app. If you have a wide load on the highway, you can get on an app and see where the wide loads are so you don’t get behind a wide load.”
Carr said many summit leaders felt Hwy. 83 had more wide loads than Hwy. 54. He added both highways need to tie into economic development.
“Hwy. 83 is still important for us too, but as far as a four lane, maybe two plus one passing lanes,” he said. “It’s always three lanes. You have a passing lane here, and it switches to the next lane. There’s always a passing lane on one side. It’s always switching back and forth.”
Carr said the Garden City statistician said this should take care of traffic flow on Hwy. 83.
“When you go north of Garden City, that traffic count’s coming way down,” he said. “When you get north of Scott City, it’s way down.”
Carr said he felt there was much in the way of good conversations at the summit, and he said housing needs to come into the equation as well.
“They’re starting to talk economic development, so housing comes into the picture,” he said. “Schools came into play. You’re talking about growth. How are you going to accommodate the growth?”
In Seward County, Carr said the main focus should remain on Hwy. 54, and city and county leaders need to get more involved, have more meetings and invite KDOT officials to those meetings.
“We don’t want to set back and lose our focus on 54,” he said. “I think we need to keep that at our top level and as one of our priorities to keep it in the light so we don’t let that fade. If not, Garden City is going to make their road, 83, a four-lane expansion.”
Carr said while any work on Hwy. 83 is good, little of that work will likely be seen in Seward County.
“KDOT put in those nice turn lanes,” he said. “They put in some passing lanes. When do you think will be the next time they’ll touch Seward County?”
