After waiting for months for the federal government to deliver promised funds, Overland Park is finally moving ahead with a traffic calming and safety plan.
Last year, Overland Park was promised $500,000 to complete a traffic Safety Action Plan using the federal Safe Streets For All (SS4A) grant program. That’s a five-year, billion-dollar program established by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law passed during the Biden administration, designed to cut down on serious injuries and deaths in traffic crashes.
Earlier this year, the money — delivered through the Federal Highway Administration — for the project was tied up amid the Trump White House’s federal grant process freezes, effectively stalling the project while the city was unable to access it.
However, the city has now received the funds, and officials say they are ready to begin the project this year.
“So, there was a lot of back and forth to try to get the final grant agreement in place, and that is now in our hands,” Councilmember Drew Mitrisin told the Post.
Overland Park’s Safety Action Plan to cost $625K
Last Wednesday, the Overland Park City Council’s Public Works Committee took a series of actions to recommend starting the program.
Those votes included a city-federal agreement to accept the funds, an agreement with Kimley-Horn and Associates Inc. to do the work, and a subscription to a private data procurement program.
“This is the agreement that we waited on for 10 months,” said Councilmember Jim Kite, who chairs the committee.
Mitrisin abstained from the first two votes due to project involvement by his employer, Burns & McDonnell. Still, he said, traffic safety “is probably the topic that we hear about the most” from constituents, so he’s glad to see the safety action plan going forward.
Public Works Director Lorraine Basalo said the city intends to use “data analysis to characterize roadway safety issues and strengthen our community’s approach through different project strategies to address those most significant safety risks.”
Specifically, the city plans to use the federal grant funds to conduct a series of traffic-calming demonstration projects, like speed cushions built on collector streets, that is, low- to medium-capacity streets that connect traffic to busier roads.
In addition to the $500,000 in federal grant funds, Overland Park and KDOT each earmarked $62,500 for the project, as well, bringing the total price tag to $625,000.
Overland Park will use outside data to help inform traffic plan
In addition to the state and federal funding Overland Park received for the safety action plan, the city also got roughly $131,000 from KDOT to help buy a subscription to analyze traffic safety data from General Motors.
The city will cover the remaining $44,000 left to pay for the three-year subscription.
The subscription will give Overland Park access to a website with anonymized aggregate data procured by GM from drivers of its vehicles in the city’s limits.
The data will show things like where drivers have to take evasive maneuvers, do hard braking and accelerate quickly to help “analyze vehicular safety in Overland Park,” according to city documents.
Basalo said the GM data “supplements” the development of the safety action plan beyond date the city already gathers, which focuses primarily on collisions.
“It does give us valid information to understand if anything else exists that may be a risk, that could cause an accident,” she said.
Next steps:
- All of the agreements tied to the safety action plan go to the full Overland Park City Council for consideration next.
- The project is still expected to begin in 2025 and stretch into 2026, per the proposed capital plan for next year.
Looking back: Federal funding cuts have JoCo cities preparing to put planned road projects on hold
