KCRag Forum

Agreed. But I'll take my chances with unintended consequences and design standards over the unregulated bs we put up with now.

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Standards held for two weeks by Planning & Zoning Committee. After passing through CPC, the development community demanded concessions that gutted many of th standards. If you think our parkways and boulevards should be more than curvy JoCo-style big box car sewers you should read up on this issue and contact the council, specifically those on the P&Z Committee.

What was their basis for needing concessions?

I assume they don't want to have deviate from their suburban cookie-cutter templates for development.

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Hey! I happen to love my "JoCo-style big box car sewers"! I would hate for everyone not to enjoy them in their neighborhood too. (sure...I am in total denial and trying to justify these godforsaken stroads).

pash wrote:Will someone please link to the proposed revisons?

It's moving through the machine as Ordinance #150544. Here is the ordinance on the city website: http://cityclerk.kcmo.org/LiveWeb/Docum ... %2ftGL8tN6

Unfortunately, it looks like the image links are broken. This does appear to be the version passed by CPC, however.

So what ended up happening with this in committee yesterday?

kboish wrote:So what ended up happening with this in committee yesterday?

it was held for another session

twitter had a lot of detail. best info learned was a developer wanting changes insulted the council.

At one point one of the developers through out the threat of "you know we don't have to be here".

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Those are all deal killers. No point in an agreement that doesn't include them.

Number 1 we tell them will be fixed with road diets.

Number 2 should not move on one bit.

Number 3 could probably deal on this some... But keeping number 5 in place.

Number 4 go to 50 percent or 40...no biggie here IMO

Number 5 do not budge.

I'm sure we can show great examples how these standards work well in other cities.... Feel free to move your shitty designs to other cities. If these standards keep a business out, they probably aren't a company we care to have anyways.

If you want to see a good reason to rethink the boulevards, go down Ward Parkway. Nothing like showing why item #1 from the developers is correct with how we do things...

From Broadway at the Plaza all the way to the Traders Joe's, a distance of 6.4 miles there's
~9 sets of crosswalks with connecting sidewalks, all at signals
~2 have crosswalks but no sidewalks connecting the two sides. The crosswalk goes to grass
~22 sidewalks connecting from both sides without marked crosswalks.
~16 without crosswalks or sidewalks connecting the two sides
there's also three crossings between Shawnee Mission Parkway and Broadway that only cover the SB/WB direction
And a few that served business parking only with a second closer one better for people

So less 20% of intersections on a premier road in KC are safe for pedestrians. Quite sad.
That's a crossing ever 0.75 miles on average.

That would be like having three safe places to cross the streetcar line.

flyingember wrote:If you want to see a good reason to rethink the boulevards, go down Ward Parkway. Nothing like showing why item #1 from the developers is correct with how we do things...

From Broadway at the Plaza all the way to the Traders Joe's, a distance of 6.4 miles there's
~9 sets of crosswalks with connecting sidewalks, all at signals
~2 have crosswalks but no sidewalks connecting the two sides. The crosswalk goes to grass
~22 sidewalks connecting from both sides without marked crosswalks.
~16 without crosswalks or sidewalks connecting the two sides
there's also three crossings between Shawnee Mission Parkway and Broadway that only cover the SB/WB direction
And a few that served business parking only with a second closer one better for people

So less 20% of intersections on a premier road in KC are safe for pedestrians. Quite sad.
That's a crossing ever 0.75 miles on average.

That would be like having three safe places to cross the streetcar line.

What you just described frustrates me so much...

A few times I have made the roughly one mile walk from Shawnee Mission and Ward Parkway to the Plaza and each time I am shocked at how unpleasant the walk is. The sidewalks are cracked and broken, the crosswalks are horrible, and the speeding cars make you feel like you're walking along a freeway. And it's even worse by bike...at each crosswalk I have to brace to fall off the non-ADA compliant sidewalks and then at the other side I have to stop, in the path of cars, and lift the front wheel of my bike onto the curb so I can do it all again a few houses later at the next street. These are some the worst sidewalks I've been on, yet they're in one of the city's most prominent areas. The entire route REALLY needs to be fixed and brought up to modern standards.

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excellent point! i think some of the reaction has been related to the uses that developers want to retain (drive-throughs, blank walls, etc), which are bad ideas everywhere.