Welcome to the World Cup! Oh, this one doesn’t have flags and soccer balls. This is one where the new visitors to our city are orange barrels and traffic cones.
The whole city seems to be under construction in some way. They just finished Highway 1/Antioch Road recently, so they decided to do the same to North Oak Trafficway. The Buck O’Neil bridge has been under construction since about five minutes after it was built. All these roads leading to the Northland and nearly all of them are dotted with barrels.
And that includes a very curious construction project around I-29, which closed last week between Vivion Road and the I-635 split. If you’re like me, you use that stretch of road several times a week. But now a major highway is closed, spitting all of that traffic on a much smaller artery, US-169. So if you want to get to 64th Street, Zona Rosa or 152, you have to go via Metro North to do it.
I drove through there Sunday – a day there’s normally only a few cars on the road – and northbound 169 was an absolute parking lot with huge semi trucks in stop and go traffic with kids that just want to go to T-Shotz.
MoDOT says this is for bridge replacement/rehabilitation which doesn’t sound like a quick job. But they insist it will be done before the World Cup. If you’re looking at a calendar, yes, the World Cup starts in four months. Have you EVER seen a construction project only take four months? It takes MoDOT a few WEEKS to just set out their cones (which then redirect traffic around a construction site that is not constructioning.) Imagine getting everyone back up to the airport if that work ISN’T done??? Hoooo boy. What a mess.
So much construction in the city beyond just roads. New buildings popping up. Streetcar being extended to the river. Retail and restaurants popping up all over.
Even new hotel construction is booming right now. And an unmovable deadline looming. Sure seems like cramming for finals the night before the test. I’m skeptical it will all get done, frankly. Missouri springs are unpredictable, and while we have good weather this week, this almost always means Mother Nature dumps eight inches of snow on us in April as a little treat.
Yet city and MoDOT officials insist they’ve got it all under control and that everything will be spic and span for the world to arrive in June. Just don’t ask where they’re all going to park.
So here we are – slamming Red Bulls and blasting Pearl Jam while trying to memorize all of the key points of the American Revolution six hours before the test starts. I’m sure it will work out for the city better than it worked out for me. Fortunately, I did better the second time I had to take the class.
Regardless, we’ll see you at the World Cup!! Just plan a little extra time for traffic.
(You don’t have to fight orange barrels to get to Chris Kamler’s Twitter account @chriskamler)
