The Community Voice :: What Wichita Wants to Know
Since February, barricades along 17th Street between Grove and Interstate 135 have sent drivers out of their way and left residents wondering: What is taking place behind the roadblocks, and when will the street reopen?
What some residents thought might be a brief undertaking has stretched into months of construction. They hadn’t expected the amount of work involved and are wondering whether the results will be worth the inconvenience.
The current closure is between Minnesota and Grove. Eastbound and westbound traffic is detoured to 13th Street using Mosley and Grove. Just west of Minnesota, 17th is open with one lane each way.
The project is the subject of our first What Wichita Wants to Know story, a series answering residents’ questions about their community.
Residents asked us: “What exactly are they doing that’s taking so long?”
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What Exactly Are They Doing?
The project includes reconstruction of the road between Interstate 135 and Grove. The rebuilt section will have one through lane in each direction and a shared center lane for left turns, replacing the previous four-lane configuration. Plans also include on-street bicycle lanes, five-foot-wide sidewalks on both sides and drainage improvements along the street.
The construction bid for the current project came in at approximately $4.9 million, nearly $1 million above the engineer’s estimate.
While we couldn’t get a specific completion date for the current project, city officials expect work to be complete by the end of this year, weather permitting.
The changes continue improvements made in separate stretches along 17th over the years. The stretch from Hillside to Oliver was converted to a similar three-lane format in 2017. Beginning in late 2020, the stretch from I-135 to Broadway was rebuilt with a three-lane layout. That work was finished in 2022.
The Four-Lane to Three-Lane Model
Converting a four-lane street to three lanes is an approach being used more often in Wichita and across the country. It’s commonly referred to as a “road diet.”
The goal of the “diet” is to reduce crashes and make room for people walking and bicycling.
On a four-lane street without a center turn lane, a driver waiting to turn left can stop traffic in the inside lane. Drivers behind that vehicle must brake or change lanes. A center turn lane gives turning vehicles a place to wait outside through traffic.
One lane each way also reduces weaving and passing, while pedestrians have fewer through lanes to cross. Federal Highway Administration research found overall crash reductions of 19% to 47% after these conversions, although results vary by location.
The 17th Street conversion is also about connecting bicycle routes. A 2022 city advisory board recommendation called for extending 17th Street’s bicycle lanes from Hillside to the Canal Route, where they can connect with the bike path at I-135.
A Long Road to Improvements
For longtime residents who endured years of deteriorating pavement along 17th street, the inconvenience comes with something they had long pushed for: investment in their neighborhood streets.
Potholes and flooding along 17th Street were so bad that in summer 2007, neighborhood resident Bobby Thomas stood at 17th and Hillside for 10 days protesting the street’s condition. His sign read: “Turn here to drive on an obstacle course.”
It still took until July 2009 for construction to get underway on the $3.4 million reconstruction of 17th Street between Grove and Hillside. It was completed in September 2010.
That same stretch of lane is scheduled for the same 3-lane diet, which will complete the roadway transition from Oliver to Broadway. With the 2007 improvements which include sewer improvements that helped address seepage problems the city said helped lead to the pothole, the “diet” work in this area shouldn’t be as extensive as the Grove to I-135 improvements.
We’ll let you know when that work is scheduled to begin.
