Official: KCMO Light Rail

[ShowMeKC]

I kind of like the urban society's plan...

Light rail down Grand/Main from the River Market to the Plaza, connection at 18th and Grand running to 18th and Prospect, then running down Prospect to or past Brush Creek.
It'd also be great when Max runs down Troost. Then it could be reinforced with streetcars around Downtown, mainly around Main, Locust, Broadway, 3rd, Admiral, 12th, 18th, Pershing.

Watching that video, it's funny how they think that the suburbs will get a "density of ridership"... The density of ridership is going to come from the densest areas of the city.

I'd also love to see US be utilized more, streetcars could pass directly next to and in front of it, future light rail routes west and east could start at Union Station, the Max currently runs next to it, Amtrack currently is located there, and of course, normal rail runs by it.

[K.C.Highrise]

This is perfect. But I doubt it will get built in the next 15 years.

[ShowMeKC]

A starter line could definitely get built in the next 15 years. It isn't going to be farther than from the River to the Plaza however...

[bahua]

A starter line could definitely get built in the next 15 years. It isn't going to be farther than from the River to the Plaza however...

I think that's possible within five.

[Tosspot]

Yeah, if I have to wait fifteen years just for a starter line, somebody please put me out of my misery.

[Paintfumes]

This is perfect. But I doubt it will get built in the next 15 years.

Thats what I like to hear.

Yeah, if I have to wait fifteen years just for a starter line, somebody please put me out of my misery.

OK

[Highlander]

This is the first time I have seen this stated in the paper:

http://www.kansascity.com/340/story/104870.html

The article basically states what has already been discussed here.  I hate to see the vote delayed until 2008.  Hopefully, that means they want the time to work out the details of the plan so that it can go to quick implementation if passed.  Making the vote coincide with the presidential election turnout is unecessary.  I wonder how they will couch this vote: a city election to select the Urban Society or Chastain plan?  I forsee a lot of confusion among the public on this one.  I am confused. 

If the Urban Society plan does not pass, how could this mean the Chastain plan would be implemented (per the ballot language)?  The city cannot implement a plan it does not have the financial resources to implement.  There are legal issues that confront that plan also.  So, prior to the 2008 vote, the public would need to know that the Chastain plan would and could not be implemented per the ballot language prior to the vote and specifically what parts of that plan were still practical given the amount of funding it provides.  Consequently, if the urban society plan is not passed in 2008, then isn't KC is very likely looking at another vote sometime later to ratify what elements of the Chastain plan that are salvagable (since any change to that plan, including changes in scope, also requires a vote)?

My own opinion is that the Urban Society plan could face an uphill battle due to the more limited service it offers. 

 

[ShowMeKC]

Maybe their plan could offer very vague and not legally binding phases to the suburbs, so that the people will realize it will be extended.

Fast streetcars could serve River/Plaza and Prospect, and later expansions could have real LR serving the River-Plaza and extending to suburbs.

It could very well pass because of the amount of people it serves. It would serve a greater amount of people than it would by being in the Northland.

[knucklehead]

Its been close to six months since the election and the "establishment" (read chamber of commerce and local media) has done nothing. The auto centric establishment has put all their money into suburban development for years and sees no value in light rail - they might even see it as a threat to the burbs.

Their strategy for killing light rail is to "study" the issue forever.

Six months from now they will still by studying the issue.

A year from now they will come out with some half assed plan that scales everthing way back followed by six months of bickering.

The only thing that is holding their feet to the fire is the Chastain initiative's effective date for switching the sales tax revenue from ATA to light rail. That is what the auto centric establishment is concerned about.

They are scheeming right now about how to get those sales tax revenues away from light rail. At some point they may be forced to support some whimpy cosmetic light rail plan to get voter approval. Their concern right now is making sure they pay the minimum price possible for regaining control over those sales tax revenues.

[tat2kc]

Maybe their plan could offer very vague and not legally binding phases to the suburbs, so that the people will realize it will be extended.

Obviously their plan would not be legally binding in the suburbs, unless those cities approved the plan also.  Just like Chastain's plan is not binding on NKC or Gladstone.

[kevink]

This is the first time I have seen this stated in the paper:

http://www.kansascity.com/340/story/104870.html

The article basically states what has already been discussed here.  I hate to see the vote delayed until 2008.  Hopefully, that means they want the time to work out the details of the plan so that it can go to quick implementation if passed.  Making the vote coincide with the presidential election turnout is unecessary.  I wonder how they will couch this vote: a city election to select the Urban Society or Chastain plan?  I forsee a lot of confusion among the public on this one.  I am confused. 

If the Urban Society plan does not pass, how could this mean the Chastain plan would be implemented (per the ballot language)?  The city cannot implement a plan it does not have the financial resources to implement.  There are legal issues that confront that plan also.  So, prior to the 2008 vote, the public would need to know that the Chastain plan would and could not be implemented per the ballot language prior to the vote and specifically what parts of that plan were still practical given the amount of funding it provides.  Consequently, if the urban society plan is not passed in 2008, then isn't KC is very likely looking at another vote sometime later to ratify what elements of the Chastain plan that are salvagable (since any change to that plan, including changes in scope, also requires a vote)?

My own opinion is that the Urban Society plan could face an uphill battle due to the more limited service it offers. 

 

Highlander makes some very good points. I also think it's foolish to wait until Nov 2008. My $.02 is that we need another vote this year (November) and a quick path to moving on and getting it built. Also consider that there are many people who voted against the Chastain plan b/c they didn't like the plan, but will vote for an alternative plan that is realistic and accomplishes the goals of a starter line. I've met many in that camp over the last few months.

[KC0KEK]

Their strategy for killing light rail is to "study" the issue forever.

MKB got the same criticism during her first term: Every proposal (e.g., an arena) had to have a committee to study it. But lo and behold, many of those proposals eventually became reality, if not because of the committees then at least not in spite of them. So let's be optimistic. Plus, light rail will cost billions and shape this city for decades to come. Another six months or a year to figure out how to do it right isn't necessarily a bad thing. And by then, we could have a new President who funnels more federal money to these types of projects.

[KCMax]

They discussed this on KC Week in Review and my god, are the establishment-types incredibly negative about this. We can't! Johnson County won't get on board! Its not feasible! We're too sprawled for light rail! Kansas Citians love cars! We can't take money from buses! We can't get federal funding! Can't! Can't! Can't!

[aknowledgeableperson]

Well, what else do you expect????????????????????????????????????

There are many steps to take in this process and we have only taken a first step.  And that step may have been in the wrong direction.

When something that is this major, this expensive, this political, and so on it takes time.  Look at how much time other communities have taken to get their dream.  15 years.  20 years.  And we haven't been through the first year.

[DaveKCMO]

When something that is this major, this expensive, this political, and so on it takes time.  Look at how much time other communities have taken to get their dream.  15 years.  20 years.  And we haven't been through the first year.

well, i'm not sure if i'd call this our real first year... we did have lots of other votes and campaigns that kept light rail on the front page over the years. this is the first year the establishment is taking it seriously, and only because a measure was approved by voters. otherwise, we'd still be dicking around with "smart"moves and faux-BRT diesel buses.

[greentara]

They discussed this on KC Week in Review and my god, are the establishment-types incredibly negative about this. We can't! Johnson County won't get on board! Its not feasible! We're too sprawled for light rail! Kansas Citians love cars! We can't take money from buses! We can't get federal funding! Can't! Can't! Can't!

Typical. Who was on the program, KCMax? I would be shocked if there is a vote or even a revised plan before November '08, y'all. First year of a new mayor/city council term, they are going to analyze this thing into the ground before it ever sees a ballot again. They'll be concentrating on how to save the tax $ for the KCATA.

[DaveKCMO]

Typical. Who was on the program, KCMax? I would be shocked if there is a vote or even a revised plan before November '08, y'all. First year of a new mayor/city council term, they are going to analyze this thing into the ground before it ever sees a ballot again. They'll be concentrating on how to save the tax $ for the KCATA.

dave helling
steve glorioso
michael mahoney
jack cashill

[knucklehead]

dave helling
steve glorioso
michael mahoney
jack cashill

Glad I missed it. Part of what is wrong in this city is channel 19 apparently thinks panels like that are balanced. Cashill and Mahoney are over the top suburb promoters and hard core anti KCMO opportunists. Helling is too, just not to the degree of Cashell and Mahoney. 

[staubio]

Helling is too, just not to the degree of Cashell and Mahoney. 

Helling is more the defeatist "it can't be done here, how are you going to pay for it, impossible!" type.

Agreed, though. No sembelance of balance there.

[GRID]

I did not post the "entire" article from planning mag , but I'm sure few would be able to read this otherwise and it's sort of interesting. (I don't think this has been posted).


Believe it or Not....



An unlikely city hopes for a transit comeback.

By Jeffrey Spivak

Kansas City, Missouri, may be one of the least likely places to find signs of mass transit's revival. Kansas City boasts more freeway miles per capita than any other major metropolitan area in the U.S. It also has one of the lowest congestion levels of any big city. Yet there may be no place with a better transit comeback story.

Last November, city voters approved a sales tax for a 27-mile light-rail system. The vote follows by a year the opening of a bus rapid transit line that has just received federal funding for an expansion.

It's an amazing turn of events for a city that for decades turned its back on mass transit. Between 1980 and 2005, the Kansas City Area Transportation Authority lost about half its ridership. City voters had turned down light rail seven times before last fall's election.

What's most interesting about Kansas City is not just the fact that light rail got approved, but how it did and why. The transit campaign was basically a one-man crusade led by someone who no longer even lived in the metro area. For years, Clay Chastain had been an activist for light rail, accumulating thousands of signatures on citizen petitions to get it on the ballot. Often ridiculed and deflated by the repeated defeats, he moved out of the area, only to reappear for new battles. He was nothing if not persistent. The city government opposed his efforts. So did the chamber of commerce. Even a transit advocacy group didn't back him.

Then he won. It was a turnaround of  historic proportions. Never before had a city turned down light rail that many times and eventually approved it.

"This is almost a one-of-a-kind situation," says Jason Jordan, APA's policy director. Never before, says Jordan, has a citizen-led petition drive for light rail succeeded in getting voter approval. "You can only read the results as the people wanting some sort of transit investment."

Kansas City, it seems, is finally joining the rest of the country. From 2000 to 2006, voters across the nation approved 70 percent of transportation ballot measures, according to the Washington D.C.-based Center for Transportation Excellence. Just last November, there were 32 transit-related issues on state or local ballots, and 72 percent of them passed, according to a tally kept by the American Public Transportation Association. The same association reports that public transit use is up 30 percent since 1995, thanks in part to a doubling of light-rail passengers since the early 1990s.

Now Kansas City is poised to hop on this light-rail bandwagon, although it will take years and won't be without some bumps. City leaders anticipate that changes will be made to Chastain's plan because it's probably underfunded. But no longer are those leaders saying that Kansas City shouldn't have light rail. It's pretty much accepted as part of the city's future, one that promises to fortify its frayed urban landscape.

"It's what we need to keep jobs and neighborhoods healthy in the central city," says Vicki Noteis, Kansas City's former planning director and now a consultant on the city's light-rail project. It's also a testament to one man's decade-long vision to bring light rail to the city, and citizens' willingness to finally accept it.

Man with a cause

Clay Chastain was a home remodeler when he burst on the scene in the early 1990s with a passion to save the city's historic but boarded-up Union Station. After a regionwide tax saved the structure, he began a campaign to return it to a transportation use.

Beginning in 1997 and continuing for the next six years, Chastain sat in front of the same supermarket and collected enough signatures of registered voters to get six initiatives on city election ballots. All involved using sales taxes and all featured light-rail routes of various lengths.

His reasoning for coming back time and time again never wavered: The city was going downhill and needed to catch up with other metropolises that were building civic improvements like light rail. What he told the Kansas City Star in 1998 was typical of his pleas: "If we're going to stay competitive with other cities and present ourselves as modern and progressive, we're going to have to develop a comprehensive transit system built around rail."

A string of embarrassments did not help his case. He once was arrested for stealing building materials. He got into a tussle with a city councilman over the council's treatment of him. He used his petitions to make notes about women and ask them out on dates. He promised to stop his petition drives, only to break those promises. In short, he often became the issue. A political consultant observed at one point: "He's now viewed as putting his ego ahead of the betterment of the city."

Not surprisingly, virtually everyone in authority was against him. And they had good reason: Chastain's plans hadn't been created with public participation, hadn't gone through engineering studies, and never seemed to provide enough money. For instance, one plan for a 25-mile rail route would have raised just $80 million in local tax money, with the expectation that state and federal governments would come up with nearly $1 billion.

The chamber and the business community repeatedly raised money to crush his initiatives, sending out pre-election mailers with such headings as: "Don't let Clay Chastain take you for a ride."

So Chastain's petitions went down to defeat. One got 45 percent support at the ballot box, which emboldened him again. But none of the others topped 40 percent. In the midst of all this, the city government got on board and undertook its own light-rail planning process, offering voters its own 24-mile route. But the city's proposal garnered just 40 percent of the vote.

Right after Chastain's sixth attempt in 2003, public transit may have hit rock bottom in Kansas City. Bus ridership reached an all-time low. Downtown operations of an open-air tourist trolley and a shuttle bus service had shut down. In a study of the 70 largest metropolitan areas, Kansas City ranked 63rd in mass transit usage.

The big change

By 2006, almost magically, everything had changed. The area transportation authority introduced bus rapid transit in 2005, and it was a hit, giving transit a little momentum. It seemed that alternative transportation was on people's minds, in part because of high gas prices and unrest in the Middle East.

Chastain, living in Virginia, came back to launch another petition drive. It called for extending a three-eighths of a cent sales tax, which had been imposed for the local bus service, to construct a 27-mile light rail line from the city's zoo to its airport, passing through downtown on the way. Additionally, it called for a fleet of electric shuttles to run on connector routes to the rail line. The ballot measure also included a proposal for an aerial gondola to connect a downtown park with the renovated Union Station.

As usual, the Kansas City Star called the plan "preposterous," and the chamber's president called it a "back-of-an-envelope scheme." This time the business community was too busy with a stem-cell research ballot measure to mount much of a campaign against light rail. Chastain did no advertising, but he did visit the city and held a round of press conferences. He went back to Virginia before the election, so he wouldn't become an issue again.

On election day, at the same time voters across the heartland and the nation were making sweeping changes in Congress, Kansas Citians were doing the same thing with mass transit. Chastain's petition passed 53 percent to 47 percent overall and won majority support in both the city's urban core and outlying sections, which are marked by suburban-style development.

A voter named Donna Roberts typified this change of heart: "I voted for it just to see if it would pass. I didn't think it would. I didn't think people in Kansas City were ready for that sort of thing. But I think it's a good idea and will improve public transportation," she told the newspaper.

Chastain, of course, felt vindicated. A former mayor called the vote a "political miracle." Meanwhile, some political leaders were outraged at the result, but a day after the election, everyone seemed resigned to accept it. Even the chamber president said his organization viewed the vote as an opportunity to vastly improve public transit.

In fact, Kansas City has long been one of the most sprawling metro areas in the U.S. The more urban south side has lost a third of its population since 1960, with major growth taking place north of the Missouri River. The central business district lost almost 10 percent of its job base between 1970 and 2000. Light rail alone won't reverse those trends, but it's expected to regenerate investment and density along the route's urban spine.

Decades ago, thoroughfares like Main Street built up nodes of activity around streetcar intersections, only to see those nodes wither into decay. Local planners say light rail has the potential to revive such neighborhood activity centers on whatever streets it ends up running on.

"It's an urban amenity that people are looking for when they move to a city," says Thomas Coyle, AICP, Kansas City's planning director. "It's one of the elements that makes a great city."

The devil in the details

Now Kansas City just has to get the line built. That will be no easy task. The devil is in the details of Chastain's ballot measure.

The measure's fine print specifically calls for powering light rail not by overhead wires but by some new in-ground technology currently used in Bordeaux, France. The wording also requires closing off downtown's Penn Valley Park to vehicular traffic, even though it includes a highway entrance ramp. Then there's the gondola. No one has any idea how much that will cost. When scrutinized in these ways, the entire measure produces more questions than answers.

Earlier this year, a city attorney and a city lobbyist presented the city council with their analysis of the light rail measure. The attorney suggested that the initiative might be unconstitutional in Missouri because the tax would probably not provide enough funding to build the entire 27 miles. The lobbyist also noted that the light-rail tax would take funding away from the city's bus system. Moreover, the Federal Transit Administration's standards for new rail projects include a prohibition against weakening local buses.

Nevertheless, city leaders are moving ahead. The area transportation authority is requesting federal planning money. The city's new mayor is expected to form a task force this spring to start a federally mandated study process. A consulting team is quietly examining a shorter route. Those involved see the likely outcome as being another election, this one to clean up and amend Chastain's measure by, among other things, cutting the length of the line.

"Can we build what Clay put on the ballot? The answer is no," says former city planning director Vicki Noteis. "But that doesn't mean we can't do light rail."

Chastain, as might be expected, sees things differently. He insists he's a changed man, interested in compromise. But he also insists that he wants to see light rail under construction by the end of the year, whereas the federally mandated planning process for funding is expected to take several years. No matter, he says. "Kansas Citians will be rewarded for their generosity and their courage."

All told, Kansas City is entering uncharted territory. Before the surprising election result, the closest thing nationally to a major, citizen-led rail transit project was Seattle tour-bus driver Dick Falkenbury's ambitious monorail expansion. Voters there approved the concept in 1997, then supported various planning stages four more times at the ballot box. However, a ballooning project budget caused the city government and eventually the voters to pull the plug on it two years ago.

Kansas City hopes its saga doesn't end up like Seattle's.