© 2024 KMUW
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

Railroad Underpass In Downtown Wichita To Get A New Look

City of Wichita
A rendering of some of the improvements planned for the Douglas railroad underpass.

The City of Wichita is moving forward with its plans to upgrade the Douglas Avenue railroad underpass.

The aging underpass in downtown Wichita, just next to Union Station, will get some structural and cosmetic improvements, including new rust-red paint and pedestrian lighting.

The project will also include pigeon mitigation, such as the removal of perches and roosts.

Downtown Wichita president Jeff Fluhr says the bridge is consistently a target of downtown cleanup efforts.

Credit Hugo Phan / KMUW/File Photo
/
KMUW/File Photo
The current state of the underpass.

"I know all of you have walked there. It crunches when you walk," he says. "And it's not because you're on gravel, it's because you're walking on deposits from the pigeons, and so it is a health issue."

City Council members this week voted to spend more than $2 million on the renovation, bringing the project's total budget to $3.6 million. The funds are included in the city's Capital Improvement Program.

--

Follow Nadya Faulx on Twitter @NadyaFaulx.

To contact KMUW News or to send in a news tip, reach us at news@kmuw.org.

Nadya Faulx is KMUW's Digital News Editor and Reporter, which means she splits her time between working on-air and working online, managing news on KMUW.org, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. She joined KMUW in 2015 after working for a newspaper in western North Dakota. Before that she was a diversity intern at NPR in Washington, D.C.