EudoraNews.com

In the third month after opening, Leavenworth County’s first interchange on the Kansas Turnpike is exceeding expectations.

Kansas Turnpike Authority numbers from March show an average of 1,452 vehicles a day entered or exited the turnpike at the new interchange on Leavenworth County Road 1 about 4 miles south of Tonganoxie.

“The last numbers I’d seen were exceeding expectations a little bit at this time,” said Rex Fleming, KTA design and construction engineer.

Traffic engineering studiesΩprojected early daily traffic at the interchange to be 1,482 vehicles a day, said Lisa Carpenter, KTA . After a two-year ramp up, 2,475 vehicles per day were expected to use the interchange, she said.

“It wasn’t expected to be a large plaza for us, and it’s not,” Fleming said. “It’s intended to serve the local commuters and give them an option to use the turnpike.”

The turnpike’s newest interchange is exceeding the established rural interchange in northern Lyon County on U.S. Highway 56, which only sees 692 vehicles per day.

But the Leavenworth County interchange numbers pale in comparison to those at the two Lawrence interchanges. The west Lawrence interchange averaged 5,610 vehicles a day in March and the one in east Lawrence, which closed April 4 for improvements, averaged 10,851 per day.

The closing of the east Lawrence interchange has bumped up recent numbers at the CR1 interchange, Fleming said.

Of the 45,025 vehicles that passed through the gates at the interchange in March, 53.27 percent exited and 46.73 percent entered the interstate, the KTA figures show. However, KTA figures don’t indicate what direction the vehicles were traveling.

When presenting the figures to Leavenworth County commissioners earlier this month, County Engineer Mike Spickelmier said the county would place counters on CR1 this year to determine which way traffic from the interchange was traveling on the county road.

The county improved CR1 to improve safety with the increased traffic and with the expectation it would spur development along the road’s corridor.

With that, an overlay district for future development was proposed one mile either side of CR1 from Tonganoixe’s southern city limits to just south of Kansas Highway 32. Interlocal agreement between the county and the city of Tonganoxie establishing the shared cost for the road and future development guidelines in the district stalled last year when the county was unable find funds to hire a called-for consultant to perform a land-use study.

After a joint meeting last month broke a long-standing impasse, the Tonganoxie City Council approved two interlocal agreements, which the county commission is to consider Thursday.

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