During the public comments segment at the beginning of Tuesday evening’s city commission meeting in Pittsburg, a half-dozen residents came forward to plead their case and ask the commission to rescind its 2001 support of a new US-69 bypass along the route proposed by the Kansas Department of Transportation (KDOT). The proposed new route, known as the West Alignment, has been a heated topic in Crawford County in recent weeks. Beginning a few miles north of Arma, the new bypass would run roughly parallel to 200th Street to US-400. Access to this bypass would be limited. The current kerfuffle was sparked by a $13 million grant from the federal government to be used in improving US-69 secured by Senator Jerry Moran. KDOT has begun to move forward on one of the key access points to the new bypass, extending US-160 west two miles from its current junction with US-69 near the state park in Frontenac. This extension runs through newly constructed homes and runs dangerously close to the small community of Capaldo. Concerns that this road will sit for 20 years, largely unused, while KDOT comes up with the $1 billion to finish the project have earned this extension the sobriquet of the “highway to nowhere.”
Source: Morning Sun
