Plans lastly in place for practical Independence Avenue Bridge warning system

Town of Kansas Metropolis and the KCT Railway have lastly reached an settlement and can quickly construct a brand new construction to forestall semi vehicles from hanging the notorious Independence Avenue Bridge. 

Town and KCT Railway have agreed to separate the prices of a warning top clearance curtain, an estimated $150,000. The warning top clearance curtain is a sequence of plastic pipes hung above a roadway on the top of the upcoming bridge. If a truck hits the curtain, the pipes make a chiming noise that may clearly be heard contained in the truck, indicating to the driving force that they won’t make it beneath the upcoming bridge and will flip round. 

The thought for the warning curtain comes from San Antonio, the place that they had an identical downside with vehicles and a low bridge. Officers in San Antonio say the answer has labored very nicely because it was put in. 

“As soon as we placed on these curtains, it labored very nicely,” mentioned Paul Berry with San Antonio Public Works to KCTV 5. “We had one crash about six months after we put within the curtains 5 years in the past, and we haven’t had any since.”

It isn’t clear when building on the Independence Avenue Bridge warning system will start. There have been 32 truck crashes with the bridge since January 2020. 

“My hope is that that is one thing that will get performed within the first quarter of subsequent yr. There is no such thing as a motive why it actually can’t be performed,” mentioned Kansas Metropolis Mayor Quinton Lucas. “I do know it’s humorous, nevertheless it actually can grow to be an actual danger not simply to the vehicles themselves, not simply to drivers, but additionally to anybody who’s both driving or strolling down Independence Avenue.”