St. John Avenue facing east, photo by Savannah Jerman

Collin Cornelison
Editorial Intern

 The recent death of a mini bike operator along a Northeast roadway has renewed road safety concerns for some area residents. 

 This incident, which Northeast News previously reported in a Facebook post, occurred on Friday, May 29th at the St. John  and N. White Avenue intersection when a mini bike passed another vehicle, colliding with a van attempting to make a left turn.

 This wasn’t the first fatal accident on St. John Avenue. In June 2025, a bicyclist was struck and killed by a semi truck while traveling south on Topping Avenue. 

 Traffic calming measures along St. John Avenue have been a priority for residents of the Indian Mound and Scarritt Renaissance neighborhoods for some time. In total, there were 235 reported car crashes on St. John between 2019 and 2024. 

“Traffic calming is not going to be perfect. There are still humans on the road, so there’s always that chance for human error, right ?,” said Riley Roche, Administrative Vice President for the Indian Mound Neighborhood Association, adding, “The goal with Vision Zero is to make it really hard for you to go too fast to a point where something that should have just been an injury becomes a death.” 

 Residents first applied for the city’s Public Improvement Advisory Committee (PIAC) funding in 2019, and several community engagement meetings were held in 2024. The first phase was completed in March 2025, adding pedestrian medians to the Van Brunt Boulevard intersection and raised crosswalks at Quincy, White, Topping & Elmwood Avenues. 

 The St. John Avenue traffic calming project is one one of several road diet projects taking place around the city. The term, “road diet,” can encompass a range of infrastructure improvements to an area, such as lane reductions, cross walks, and speed limit adjustments. 

 In May 2020, the City Council passed the Vision Zero resolution with the goal of eliminating traffic fatalities and serious injuries by 2030. The plan analyzed a number of risk factors, using Kansas City’s High Injury Network as the main data point for selecting road segments for traffic calming interventions, such as road diets. Analysis showed a much higher concentration of high risk roads in disadvantaged areas. 

 In 2024, the Public Works Department enacted Ordinance #240584, which created a road diet implementation plan to support the city’s Vision Zero goals.

  The rate of traffic-related deaths has been trending downwards since 2020, according to data from the Kansas City Police Department, however the number of deaths involving pedestrians and bicyclists actually rose between 2024 and 2025. 18 pedestrians and 1 cyclist were killed in traffic accidents in 2024, compared to 25 pedestrians and 6 cyclists in 2025.

 According to the Vision Zero Action Plan, more than 15% of fatal and serious injury crashes involve pedestrians and cyclists. The majority of crashes that result in death or serious harm occur on “Minor Arterial Roads,” or roads that see less traffic volume and pass through residential areas. Serious or fatal car crashes were also 1.6 times more likely to take place on urban roadways in disadvantaged areas. 

 The second phase of the St. John Avenue Traffic Calming Project may now be pushed back to the end of July, according to a representative from Kansas City Public Works. Another public engagement meeting is being scheduled ahead of the projected start date.

This phase, funded by Vision Zero, will bring safety features to St. John between Elmwood and Gladstone Blvd in the Scarritt Renaissance Neighborhood. Raised crosswalks will be added to 4 locations (Kensington, Jackson, Monroe, Indiana). Additional improvements include painted bike lanes on the north and south sides of the street, painted bus stops and bumpouts, and a possible speed limit adjustment to 25 MPH. The bike lane extension will end at the St. John & Benton Blvd roundabout. Public Works will also be adding day-lighting delineations to cross streets, so that it will be easier for people in vehicles to see around the corners at stop signs.

 The Indian Mound Neighborhood Association held its regular monthly meeting on Monday June 15, to discuss (among other things) additional improvements to St. John Ave., as well as the possibility of a north/south bike lane similar to the one recently completed on Southwest Blvd. Van Brunt and Belmont boulevards were both considered as potential routes for the new bike lane, with Van Brunt receiving some support at the meeting. 

 In addition to the various traffic calming projects throughout the city, Kansas City will soon be adopting and launching a program called “Safe Across” to promote safety. This is specifically focused on drivers yielding to pedestrians in cross walks, but the hope is that the campaign will have ripple effects on increasing driver awareness and roadway safety.