Joint Legislative Transportation Vision Task Force – Garden City Meeting

Safety is a Key Component of Transportation – At last Thursday's meeting in Garden City, the Task Force turned its focus to safety.  KDOT provided updates on various safety campaigns targeted at driver and passenger behavior, such as increased seat belt usage. Other ways KDOT works to increase roadway safety includes adding rumble strips to help prevent lane departures and installing roundabouts to reduce serious injuries and crashes. Presentations from the meeting can be found here.

Local Testimony Highlights Need for Safety Improvements – During the public testimony, a variety of stakeholders shared personal stories that showed the importance of improving the safety of our state’s roads. Stakeholders would like to see safety improvements made to K-156 and U.S. 54, as well as the addition of passing lanes on U.S. 83 between Scott City and Garden City. Stakeholders also shared the importance of transportation infrastructure as it plays an integral role in supporting the state’s economy, including transporting agriculture products to markets. 

Task Force Goals and Discussion – Now that the Task Force has completed half of the scheduled meetings, they reviewed and discussed their stated goals, including:  

·         Define transportation needs/priorities

·         Identify how much funding will be required to meet those priorities

·         Identify funding options that can be consistently provided to meet those priorities

No changes were made to the goals and the Task Force has asked for additional discussion and information to be provided on a variety of topics, including:  city and county transportation needs; federal funding; and ways pavement life can be extended.

The next task force meeting will be at Wichita State University on Oct. 18. This meeting will focus on technology, including Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) and autonomous and connected vehicles. More information about future meeting locations and directions on how to provide testimony can be found here.

Aviation, Transit, and Bike/Pedestrian Stakeholder Meetings in Wichita. Before the task force meeting in Wichita, we will hold stakeholder meetings to discuss Aviation, Transit, and Bike/Pedestrian topics from 8:00 – 9:30 a.m. Additional topic-specific stakeholder meetings will be held at future meetings in Hays and Olathe.