Kansas City Officials Warn of Major Traffic Disruptions Due to I-670 and I-70 Construction

Kansas City drivers face a pair of simultaneous, long-term interstate shutdowns starting this winter, bringing major traffic disruptions to both I-670 and I-70.

Construction on the Roy Blunt Luminary Park will close a central stretch of I-670 beginning Dec. 2, creating traffic disruptions expected to last for two years as crews build a greenspace above the highway.

The completed project will reconnect neighborhoods separated when I-670 was built through downtown in the 1960s, according to Jeff Martin, Kansas City’s assistant city manager. “When I-670 was constructed back in the ’60s, they actually created a divide, kind of an urban canyon through downtown, really separated downtown from those neighborhoods to the southeast and west,” Martin said. “So this will reconnect those.”

Kansas City Officials Warn of Major Traffic Disruptions Due to I-670 and I-70 Construction

Phase one of the park construction will close I-670 from I-35 to U.S. 71, alongside east and westbound Truman Rd. from Broadway Blvd. to Baltimore Ave. City officials opted to close both directions of the south side of the I-670 loop entirely rather than reducing lanes, aiming to accelerate the construction schedule and protect roadside workers.

Traffic through the downtown corridor will be diverted primarily to the north loop of I-670, though officials note no single detour will suit every driver. The initial phase builds a single block of the planned 5.5-acre park, a project that arrives following years of funding hurdles and delays.

Overlapping Work on I-70 Adds to Regional Delays

Compounding the downtown congestion, the Improve I-70 project will shut down a heavily traveled stretch of the highway in January. An 11-month closure will block both directions of I-70 between Paseo Blvd. and Van Brunt in both directions along a corridor used by approximately 105,000 vehicles every day.

James Pflum, the MoDOT project director for Improve I-70, said that this section of highway is 60 years old. “At a point where we don’t need to address one thing, we’re actually addressing multiple things,” Pflum said.

State modeling indicated that reducing lanes instead of implementing a full closure would have generated an estimated 50-minute delay, while a wreck would shut the interstate down completely. A shutdown of this scale has not occurred anywhere across Missouri in 20 years, according to Pflum.

Navigating Detours and Alternative Routes

Transportation planners have categorized affected motorists into community traffic, commuter traffic and regional traffic. Regional drivers are advised to utilize interstates 435 and 470 as detours during the overlapping construction periods.

While city streets surrounding the I-70 construction area underwent recent rebuilding to handle local traffic increases, officials warned commuters against relying on city streets for that entire volume. Pflum urged motorists who have followed the same driving patterns for years to test alternative routes ahead of the official closure dates.