Turning U.S. Highway 71 into a parkway is still a long way away. But city planners have an idea of what it might look like if given the chance to address traffic and safety issues on the congested roadway.
The project known as “Reconnecting the East Side” intends to improve the roadway, also known as Bruce R. Watkins Drive, while reconnecting predominantly Black neighborhoods that were torn apart by the highway’s construction decades ago. It also aims to address traffic congestion, safety and environmental concerns on the highway, while also boosting the local economy by creating more space for future development.
City officials in early April unveiled a plan called the “Parkway Alternative” that would turn a section of U.S. 71 between 85th Street and Martin Luther King, Jr. Boulevard into a freeway and connect the neighborhoods in that area with new surface streets using bridges that travel over the highway…