K-96 (Kansas highway)

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K-96 is a state highway in central and southern Kansas. Its western terminus is at the Colorado state line east of Towner, Colorado, where it continues as Colorado State Highway 96; its eastern terminus since 1999 is at U.S. Route 54/U.S. Route 400 east of Wichita.

The eastern terminus was once at the Missouri state line, where the road continued as Route 96. With the construction of U.S. 400, K-96 was either duplexed with or bypassed by this road, and the road was decommissioned east of the current eastern terminus. It was duplexed with U.S. Route 75 between Neodesha and Independence; and from Independence to Columbus it was replaced with a realigned U.S. Route 160. East of Alternate U.S. Route 69, it was turned over to the county. In Missouri, Missouri 96 was terminated at Route 171, and the section between Missouri 171 and the Kansas state line was turned into Missouri Supplemental Route YY.

[edit] History

The choice of the number 96 comes from the telephone number of the Wichita Automobile parts store of F.W. "Woody" Hockaday. During the 1910s, Hockaday marked distances between towns at his own expense along the major auto trails with a large red "H" and arrows pointing the direction. When the state began numbering the routes, they allowed Hockaday to pick the number of the route that was posted with the most signs, which consisted of the Kansas-Colorado Boulevard, the Central Route, and the Ozark Trail.

The Wichita-Hutchinson segment was straightened in the early 1970s, bypassing the towns of Maize and Mount Hope. In recent years, urban sprawl has brought the highway within city limits. Near the Amish community of Yoder, symbolic warning signs were placed on the road to warn drivers of the presence of carriages on the cross streets.

By 1996, the roadway had been widened to a four-lane expressway, and the symbolic warning signs near Yoder were not retained, as the signs did not comply with the Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices at the time. An interchange was built at Yoder Road; however, carriage traffic still crossed the roadway at-grade. In September 2000, a minivan heading home from the Kansas state fair struck a carriage, killing the elderly occupants and their horses. The driver of the van could not see the carriage in time to avoid the accident, and was cleared of wrongdoing. The Kansas Department of Transportation received bad publicity in the wake of the accident because of the removal of the carriage warning signs. Despite the non-compliance with the MUTCD, new symbolic signs were installed along the roadway in 2001. The expressway segment of K-96 has been posted with a speed limit of 70 miles per hour since the repeal of the national speed limit. This has also been a contention in accidents along this stretch, and some state legislators have attempted to write legislation to lower the speed limit along this stretch.