KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Amid Kansas City, Missouri's stay-at-home order, residents continue to venture outside, packing parks and sidewalks throughout the city.
To deal with this issue, some city council members want to close off some streets to block traffic and open them for pedestrians and bicyclists to help maintain social distancing.
Councilman Eric Bunch is a co-sponsor of aresolution that identifies the issue.
"At Loose Park, we see excessive crowding happening there,” Bunch said, “and with a trail that’s 7 to 8 feet wide, unfortunately people are unable to pass each other safely.”
The original resolution laid out a plan for three east-west roads – one in the Northland, another in the central part of the city and the last road closure in the southern part.
But after some pushback, the resolution was alternated to only include non-arterial streets, such as collector streets like Walnut Street or residential streets.
Council member Katheryn Shields said she did not want to see road closures but was open to the ideas of lane closures.
"I think our people are very resilient people,” Shields said, “and I think they can figure out how to go walk outside without us taking major resources from our public works department.”
Public Works Director Sherri McIntyre said any street closure would not impact emergency service.
“When we say street closures, we still have to maintain local street traffic people, local traffic only,” McIntyre said. “So we’re not saying there’s no traffic on a street, and you have it set up so that you can get emergency vehicles in and out through the corridor."
The plan has the backing of DuRon Netsell, who lives in Midtown and sees the problem from just walking outside.
"I’ve never seen so many people walking and biking up and down this street with children on bicycles, which I have not seen before,” Netsell said.
This plan also would change some push-button signals at crosswalks to automatically turn so people don’t have to push the button to alert the signal to cross the street.
The plan would terminate as soon as KCMO’s stay-at-home orders are lifted.
The resolution will go through the Public Works Department and the city manager’s office to gather more feedback from council members as well as the public.
