Officials hope roundabout at Route K, Sinclair Road will improve safety
COLUMBIA, Mo. (KMIZ)
A busy Columbia highway will be shut down for months as workers build a roundabout that officials say will improve safety and traffic flow in a growing area of the city.
The intersection of Route K, Sinclair Road and Old Plank Road closed Monday for the construction of a single-lane roundabout. The road will be closed through Aug. 16.
The project has been in the works since the construction of John Warner Middle School on Sinclair Road. The school opened in August. Columbia Public Schools did a traffic study that showed intersection improvements were needed at Route K and Sinclair because of the additional traffic the middle school would generate.
The project will cost more than $1.6 million and is funded through the 2015 capital improvement sales tax renewal as well as funding from the Missouri Department of Transportation and Columbia Public Schools.
Matt Pitzer, who represents the area on the Columbia City Council, said the construction will make the intersection safer for drivers by eliminating unsafe left turns drivers had to make off Route K.
"That will become better traffic flow there and potentially help with some of the dangerous speeding and driving along Route K through that intersection," Pitzer said.
Pitzer said the construction of more sub-divisions along Sinclair increased the need for road improvement.
"More neighborhoods means more traffic at all times of the day. now with the school coming in now, you've got a heavy flow of traffic," Pitzer says.
Gale Blomenkemp with the Boone County Fire District said aligning Sinclar, Old Plank Road and Route K is crucial in making the intersection safer.
"You had stop signs coming into it at different angles and congestion there it was just a dangerous intersection," Blomenkemp says.
Gale Blomenkemp said the road closure causes about a six-minute delay for the fire department when responding to calls. This will cause the department to take a detour through a subdivision.
Due to the construction, the fire department's secondary station will now be dispatched first to any incidents west of Sinclair Road.
Tuesday the fire department will be meeting with the construction company and the City of Columbia to try to come up with a solution so that Station A can gain access to Old Plank Road when traveling on Route K.
Blomenkemp told KMIZ the construction is impossible for the station to get their fire truck and boat to the Missouri River.
"If not we're going to have to run through cascade subdivision and Arrowhead Lake subdivision which adds about six minutes to our response time. The city was very open to discussing that with us and we are going to meet first thing in the morning to see if we can come up with a solution," Blomenkemp said.
During the closure, Sinclair Road will be inaccessible from Route K. However, drivers will be able to access Old Plank Road from the west side of the intersection using a temporary road.
City officials are asking drivers to find alternate routes and for anyone in the work zone to use extreme caution.
