Highway 40 Insight

I-170 Mess in December AND 2008

As you may have heard, starting tomorrow, southbound I-170 will be reduced to one lane from Galleria Parkway to Eager Road for approximately two weeks. Dan Galvin said on Fox 2 that this is “not going to be pretty”. Already the two lanes of southbound I-170 back up to at least the Galleria Parkway as people try to get on Highway 40 or Eager Road. Now, imagine that’s one lane, and I can see backups extending to Forest Park Parkway or even further north.

Now, you may think this is a temporary inconvenience, since MoDOT has stated that this will only last for two weeks. However, you need to look more closely at the construction plans come the shutdown on January 2nd, 2008. Here’s the lane layout that Gateway Constructors has published:

http://www.thenewi64.org/download/construction_zone/2008%20Brentwood-Eager%20Details.pdf

Sure, if you’re going east on Highway 40 from I-170, you’ll have two lanes on the new flyover ramp. But if you’re headed anywhere else (Hanley, Brentwood, Eager, etc.), you need to look a little more closely:

There will be just a single lane from Galleria Parkway to Eager Road. Not only that, but, as the blue arrow shows, you won’t have any separate turn lanes onto Eager. All traffic will be funneled through the intersection in a single lane. I have confirmed this with Gateway Constructors.

How many cars can you send through that light at a time? 20, 30? Is there any hope that this configuration will handle all the traffic trying to get onto Eager and the Brentwood Promenade?

This entry was posted on Sunday, December 2nd, 2007 at 3:29 pm and is filed under Eager Rd, I-170. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.