Southwest Boulevard is a major transportation corridor in Kansas City, Missouri. It connects, and at times divides, the community in the Westside.  The Southwest Boulevard Transportation Plan identifies improvements to safety, mobility, and access for people in the Westside neighborhood.  These improvements were developed through engagement with the community, focusing on participatory planning and consensus building utilizing a full bilingual approach.  A detailed, data-driven implementation plan supports progress on recommendations.

 

Hoxie Collective led an engagement effort for this plan that included multiple public meetings and surveys, walking tours, design workshops, focus groups, business outreach, and collaboration with multiple agencies, departments, and officials.  This work also integrated issues and aspirations from previous planning efforts that the community has highlighted as priorities for decades.

 

Recommendations are organized in three key focus areas: mobility, placemaking, and the natural environment, including a variety of actions that make it easier and safer to move around the corridor, more pleasant and inviting to spend time in the corridor, and that address frequent flooding. Three catalyst projects with strategic potential to improve the corridor were explored in greater detail, including a reconfiguration of travel lanes on the street, the construction of protective medians and pedestrian refuge areas, and a new shared use path.

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Since the completion of this plan, the corridor has seen incredible progress on implementation.  $43.6M of improvements have been designed in two phases.  Construction of the first phase is substantially complete as of June 2026 and includes:

 

• Streetscape improvements with a shared use path

• Roadway repaving

• Sidewalk repairs

• New traffic signals

• Water main replacement

• Flood storage

• New trash cans

• Upgrades to public parking lots

• Community banners and a gateway statue

 

This work also spurred community-led improvements to the Southwest Boulevard in the Crossroads neighborhood, including traffic calming, a protected bike lane extension, and an enhanced streetscape.

 

Both projects were able to be completed in time for 2026 FIFA World Cup celebrations.