The Governing Body approved staff to work with George Butler Associates (GBA) and Vireo through Visioning Phase to identify our communities priorities for our Roe Blvd. project.  In doing so, we developed an Advisory Committee made up of business leaders, governing body members, transit community members, KDOT staff, WYCO staff, and residents.  We held 3 Advisory Committee meetings and 2 Public Meetings.  Vireo established an online presence for the project to accept feedback and comments from the Public using Facebook and roeblvd.digicate.com

In total, we had 32 people attend our public meetings and offer comments/concerns.  Currently, 355 respondents have participated in opinion surveys and our social media has reached thousands of people.  Throughout the Visioning Phase there were two main items that continually became main points of discussion:  1) Maintain the traffic capacity of Roe Blvd. for vehicular traffic to safely use in our City. 2) Make Roe Blvd. a more walkable and safer corridor for our non-vehicular users to connect both half's of our City.  GBA and Vireo produced concept alternatives for intersections and roadway typical sections to show how we can achieve our community’s goals and we discussed alternatives in our advisory committee meetings and our public meetings. 

We have completed our Visioning Phase and are providing the governing body the following recommendations to begin preliminary design:

• Keep four lanes of traffic to maintain capacity through our City
• Remove unnecessary turn lanes with low volumes of turn movements to make the vehicular traffic more efficient
• Remove unnecessary traffic signals
• Construct a Multiuse (minimum 8' wide) trail along Roe Blvd.  
• Maintain and improve median uses for pedestrian crossing safety areas
• Beautification and Gateway Elements improvements, along with improvements along corridor

The recommendations are a combination of feedback and studies performed on the Corridor over the last year.  GBA will begin their preliminary design efforts once the Governing Body approves the recommendations.  The Design schedule for this project is tentatively:

• Preliminary Design – November 2017 – October 2018
• 60% Plans Complete (KDOT Field Check) - November 2018
• Final Design – December 2018 – August 2019
• Final Plans Complete – August 2019
• Advertise  - October 2019
• Letting – November 2019
• Construction - 2020

The total project cost for 2020 Roe Blvd project is $8.2 Million dollars.  As we get into preliminary design, staff will work with the design team to ensure our project is within budget and on schedule.