Engineers put drivers on left to ease traffic congestion in Kansas City

KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- Engineers are planning a brazen design to ease congestion and reduce accidents here that discards something sacred among American motorists -- driving on the right side of the road.

Missouri Department of Transportation officials considered a number of plans for the Front Street approach to Interstate 435. But the one they settled on appears to be a national first, costs the least and is expected to most effectively handle traffic -- by briefly crisscrossing lanes and putting drivers on the left, a position seldom experienced this side of the Atlantic.

Road planners here say they modeled their so-called "diverging diamond" design after one in use in the French city of Versailles, where like here, motorists drive on the right. The $6 million price tag nearly cut in half projections of $11 million for competing ideas; the project is to be started and finished in 2007.

Once done, drivers following Front Street will reach a traffic signal, then be guided to the opposite side of the road, divided by a concrete median with glare screens to minimize potentially disorienting views of cars to the right -- who switched sides at the light as well. After about 600 to 700 feet, motorists reach another traffic signal and are returned to the right side of the road.

Ramps before the first and second lights allow motorists to enter I-435.

"Most of us look at it and we say, 'What?"' said Susan McCubbins, a transportation project manager for the state. "Then we think it through and we realize the safety and traffic advantages."

While officials here are believed to be the first in this country to approve such a design, they are not the first to consider. In Ohio, engineers were studying the diverging diamond plan as an alternative to reconstructing a bridge in Findlay. They ultimately decided to put off a new bridge by simply increasing the number of lanes on the existing one, though engineers still have praise for the wrong-side-of-the-road design.

"From an engineering standpoint it makes a lot of sense," said Eric Pfenning, an Ohio Department of Transportation engineer. "Bottom line is you can move a lot of traffic with the design."

Doug Hecox, a Federal Highway Administration spokesman, said this was the first such use of the diverging diamond design in this country, though he suggested it could be seen more often.

"The design is something that really has some potential," he said.

Others are more skeptical, though.

Ray Mundy, the director of the Center for Transportation Studies at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, said roadway planners must be careful when copying designs used in Europe, where motorists are much more used to driving on both the left and right sides of the road.

"You're so used to always going to that right side of the road, we just do it second nature," said Mundy. "We're not used to changing our behavior based on the country we're in unlike in Europe."

McCubbins said engineers here understand that and designed the I-435 project to guide motorists through with ease. She said mistakes will happen, but not easily.

"It would be very similar to someone going up the wrong ramp," she said.

Most of the world, like in the U.S., travels on the right side of the road, though countries including Britain, Australia, India and South Africa drive on the left. Motorists in the U.S. Virgin Islands buck the American trend and drive on the left, too.