Clay Chastain coming back with light rail

[bbqboy]

make Kansas City great again.

[flyingember]

His latest plan makes it seem like he still doesn't quite understand transit and has no interest in jobs access as a whole, which is a top item to sell transit. He does understand that votes win on things people say they want, even if financially unsound

Airport to downtown via I-29/169. No reducing road reliance for Second Creek, no access to jobs at Tiffany Springs or NKC, huge bridge crossing problem on the Broadway Bridge. I question where exactly the track will go along 169. It's like he wanted to reduce ridership on the route north of the river. People won't vote for a line that doesn't get them to work, avoiding the two big northland job centers is not smart for any plan.

From downtown takes Broadway/Wornall to 63rd. This section isn't bad though Wornall south of Brush Creek doesn't make much sense over another route. If people disliked track on the Trolley Trail imagine the opposition to going down what is a skinny neighborhood scale two lane road. And it doesn't try to intercept the streetcar anywhere to sell it as a functioning system except for at the Plaza which I doubt was on purpose.

Down 63rd to 435 and ? to Cerner. I'm not quite sure on this because the Star map is small and puts the Cerner campus in the wrong place.

The other branch looks to go via Pershing to Hospital Hill to Linwood to the stadiums. A route we've discussed with the streetcar. Seems like he's overlapping efforts with the commuter rail system too. If I thought he had actually formally studied the route that could be a good alternative to get to downtown from Lee's Summit.

[shaffe]

Airport to downtown via I-29/169. No reducing road reliance for Second Creek, no access to jobs at Tiffany Springs or NKC, huge bridge crossing problem on the Broadway Bridge. I question where exactly the track will go along 169. It's like he wanted to reduce ridership on the route north of the river. People won't vote for a line that doesn't get them to work, avoiding the two big northland job centers is not smart for any plan.

If we're talking unrealistic northland service I think the obvious first route is to break out of downtown via NKC and meander over to Platte county/KCI from there (roughly I-29, though I'm not sure the best way to lay the track on/around the highway itself). The other half of the unrealistic northland plan would be up I-35 to Liberty and a connector between the two lines along 152.

It's really not that hard, just unrealistic to build unless somebody else wants to give KC many billions of dollars.

[flyingember]

We covered this already in the airport thread. Getting from downtown to Zona Rosa/Tiffany Springs makes sense because it's replacing inevitable freeway widening costs for Second Creek with a smaller scope road project and a rail line. The money will be spent either way so it's not a route that should be argued over. The cost doubles to get past that to the airport. I like the idea of going to the airport but it's just not financially feasible to go that far initially.

To get to Zona Rosa the route that seems best is over or parallel to HOA Bridge, up N. Oak and turn onto Barry. Both have plenty of capacity, cover what will become a MAX line someday so it's a transit priority corridor and have the bidirectional jobs aspect covered to drive daily ridership. Barry is also the northland's apartment center, you pass complex after complex on that route, so there's more ridership than many other options north of the river. Any route beyond that is hard to quantify cost-wise before a dozen routes south of the river go in.

A via HOA route also would allow streetcar expansion because it lines up a bridge crossing at a perfect spot to the system. A short streetcar spur line into NKC to the hospital someday would make sense, once the under I-35 clearance issue is figured out. It's one of the major jobs spots for the whole region and needs to be connected to.

To Liberty go via Birmingham on the freight lines. Will be a fraction the cost and the same rights for the to Lee's Summit route in the east bottoms takes care of part of this route to downtown or could connect over the same HOA crossing. There's two rail lines, one to Kearney and one to Excelsior from Birmingham that go through Liberty so could hit even further out. Also cheaper than widening I-35 to 6 lanes. Liberty is about to open up another 30k people worth of development so a widening will happen someday.

The 152 line I like the idea of, but it's also going to be hard to validate the cost.

[shaffe]

Well I suppose instead of using just 152 if you were going down Barry to Zona Rosa you could just go east of N. Oak over to Maple Woods and then use 152 from there. As much as I'd like a straight line from NKC down I-29 the N.Oak corridor is a much better candidate for transit as you point out, and it's also already a very straight line. So then there would be a big T more or less with N. Oak making up the N/S spine and Barry Road/152 making up the E/W spine. By Google Maps that makes about 10 miles from 3rd/Grand to Barry/N.Oak and another 12 from Zona Rosa to 291/152 in Liberty (if one wanted to go that far). $50-$75 million/mile puts that at $1.1-$1.7 billion to rail up the northland.

Anybody got a spare $2 billion laying around? It does really well connect half of KCMO though, and the fastest growing part of it to boot. I wonder what travel times would be from either end to downtown.

[flyingember]

30-45 minutes

[longviewmo]

Depends on how many Tech N9ne concerts are going on downtown.

[kcjak]

Given Clay's previous plans, is it even reasonable to expect ~$1 billion from the feds? At least there were no gondolas or updates to Penn Valley Park inserted into this proposal.

[DaveKCMO]

Given Clay's previous plans, is it even reasonable to expect ~$1 billion from the feds? At least there were no gondolas or updates to Penn Valley Park inserted into this proposal.

perhaps, if the local funding could actually generate the rest and operate it sufficiently (which it cannot). i think the per-mile construction cost would have to be LESS than streetcar for this to work.

[Highlander]

Seems like yet another Chastain proposal would complicate and confuse the entire issue making it harder to get anything done with phase II.

I've never liked any of Chastain's proposals. They have promised too much for too little, they are not well thought through and have a lot of hidden agendas. Coupled with the proposal that actually passed was the destruction of Science City - one of his long sought after objectives.

I've never liked the idea of public transportation like light rail being extended to singular destinations like Cerner, KCI or the stadiums. They do not generate enough traffic in themselves on a regular basis to justify spending the money to cover the relatively long distances to access them. Locally, DT out to Waldo makes sense. In a more regional sense, a light rail line to south Joco would be money better spent than to SE Kansas City.

[FangKC]

The thing about Chastain is that at some point you just have to wonder if this is more about his ego. If you want to improve transit in Kansas City, one should actually still reside here, and it makes more sense to work on the issue with a group of other stakeholders that want the same thing.

Then when you go to the voters with a transit plan, it is a group of interested parties making the argument, and not one man. We already have groups devoted to improving transit, as well as KCATA, city, and county governments working on a regional plan.

[Highlander]

The thing about Chastain is that at some point you just have to wonder if this is more about his ego. If you want to improve transit in Kansas City, one should actually still reside here, and it makes more sense to work on the issue with a group of other stakeholders that want the same thing.

I do think that it must really gnaw at him that KC finally got some kind of fixed rail public transportation and he wasn't part of the process. It happened because some people had realistic visions rather than a pie-in-the-sky wish list that was never going to be implemented in a single stroke. Had KC had a more down-to-earth and credible champion for light rail/streetcars back in the 90's we would probably be much further along in the process.

[flyingember]

I doubt he ever talked with modot over if the route is feasible. Part of his route has fiber optics along it and existing contracts probably will limit its use. It's that lack of attention to detail that saw the city win the lawsuit over throwing one project out because it couldn't be built.

I also don't get why he keeps focusing on the same basic path over and over. Why not promote a tax to take rail to lees summit, liberty and such. Way cheaper and could probably fund it with that tax if not entirely and getting a river crossing is one of the holy grails for KC transit.

The other thing that makes no sense is to put up taking the bus tax again. That immediately will kill the plan for the east side. And as we have seen over the years is the east side is big enough to kill a transit vote if you don't get the northland on board

[Highlander]

He's got enough signatures but I doubt if it ever gets to the ballot. There is precedent now for keeping unfeasible proposals from being voted on so I suspect this will be a steep uphill battle for Chastain.

[DaveKCMO]

He's got enough signatures but I doubt if it ever gets to the ballot. There is precedent now for keeping unfeasible proposals from being voted on so I suspect this will be a steep uphill battle for Chastain.

that was the previous council.

i believe a majority might prevent it from going in november, but in the end i suspect they will allow it on (since he worked with the city attorney on the language this time -- which sorta precludes the previous situation where the city rewrote the language?).

i think they have until august 30 to decide: http://www.sos.mo.gov/elections/calendar/2016cal

[FangKC]

Council could vote soon to put Chastain's latest light-rail proposal on ballot

On June 17, the City Clerk's office reported that Chastain had gathered 1,756 valid petition signatures, surpassing the 1,708 required to place the matter before voters.

City Attorney Bill Geary told the committee Wednesday that Chastain's proposal could be "illegal" but that the City Charter requires it to be presented to voters because it is probable that a court would find the proposed ordinance "not unconstitutional on its face."

"It's possible to have a ballot question that's not unconstitutional on its face but is illegal," Geary said. "If it's constitutional on its face, it can be ridiculous, silly, or it can be the best thing since sliced bread."

Courts don't like to spend time conducting pre-election reviews of ballot questions because of the possibility that they might fail, Geary said. But ballot proposals that the city deems illegal can be repealed after the fact, he said.

http://tinyurl.com/j46xu9f

[DaveKCMO]

this committee substitute language gives some details on the routing:

[FangKC]

Tonight on Kansas City Week in Review on KCPT, it was suggested that should Chastain's ballot proposal pass again this time, that the City could actually ignore the specifics of his plan, and just use the tax mechanism approval to fund the City's own vision for mass transit. This could include extending the streetcar routes.

What do you think Dave?

[DaveKCMO]

Tonight on Kansas City Week in Review on KCPT, it was suggested that should Chastain's ballot proposal pass again this time, that the City could actually ignore the specifics of his plan, and just use the tax mechanism approval to fund the City's own vision for mass transit. This could include extending the streetcar routes.

What do you think Dave?

i doubt this council would be so bold. they'd simply undo it because they have the legal authority to do so. i'm not sure they can just ignore the specifics (hancock).

the same goes for the streetcar extension: if the council doesn't take action to construct the thing, it won't happen. given the limited scope and stronger chance of voter approval, i think they'll actually do it (and if this council doesn't, the next one might). unlike clay's plan, the streetcar extension only requires rail from the starter line's terminus down main to the vicinity of UMKC's volker campus -- it doesn't specify stops or connecting services. also: the court requires a financial plan if submitted by voters, so there's a lot more confidence in the numbers than clay's kinda-sorta calculation.

[kboish]

I believe that this time the ballot language is such that if approved, it basically acknowledges the funding may be inadequate to do the whole thing and to pretty much "do what you can" and doesn't specify any priorities, but it would have to be used for rail and buses.