Phase Three Streetcar Expansion

Transportation topics in KC

What route should the third phase of streetcar expansion follow?

Linwood: Main to Michigan(71 Highway)
11
10%
Country Club ROW: UMKC to Brookside/Waldo
24
22%
Country Club ROW: UMKC through Brookside/Waldo to Prospect
14
13%
Linwood: Main to Emanuel Cleaver 2
13
12%
City/County Wide Rail Project
40
36%
Other
9
8%
 
Total votes: 111

horizons82
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Re: Phase Three Streetcar Expansion

Post by horizons82 »

flyingember wrote: Wed Dec 30, 2020 10:58 am oh, I knew that. it's what makes your points so sad. One big success and you moved into a role where you're maintaining the status quo with tiny changes to the existing network in ways that decrease ridership per capita
What exactly have you contributed to the metro?
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Re: Phase Three Streetcar Expansion

Post by flyingember »

horizons82 wrote: Wed Dec 30, 2020 12:10 pm
flyingember wrote: Wed Dec 30, 2020 10:58 am oh, I knew that. it's what makes your points so sad. One big success and you moved into a role where you're maintaining the status quo with tiny changes to the existing network in ways that decrease ridership per capita
What exactly have you contributed to the metro?
Our family is critical to the bus in Liberty still existing. That city council would have defunded that service several times over the years without the efforts undertaken around petitions to that council. To this day I have social connections onto that council going back 30 years. We're not talking "I met them at a meeting" but more on the scale of "I went to their home"

So if you think I don't understand the scale of the situation around funding, you're sadly mistaken.

One person really can have a huge impact on the topic. It's why I mention announcing the 50 year plan, committing to running those lines on that timescale and letting the public get involved.

Look at how long it took to get a streetcar, construction began in 2014. The first modern proposal was in 1991. If it took 20+ years to get movement on what became the biggest transit line in the city and it took grassroots efforts...

I think people will be surprised what can be done by a small number of people when they're given a promise.
Developers will spend billions when they're given a promise and cities will get on board to gain billions in development.

Chastain was grassroots. That we're still talking about him after 30 years since he started transit petitions shows how important small scale efforts based around promises are.
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grovester
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Re: Phase Three Streetcar Expansion

Post by grovester »

"One person really can have a huge impact on the topic"

Ain't that the truth!
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beautyfromashes
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Re: Phase Three Streetcar Expansion

Post by beautyfromashes »

We should cut transportation to distant suburbs. It's a money loser and doesn't help the ultimate goal of building a vibrant city. Build the center of the city as the hub for all commerce and entertainment and both incentivize people to live close by providing free, easy transportation services and also set up disincentives to make it difficult to travel from nondense areas. Make moving back to the city both a time and money saving option.
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normalthings
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Re: Phase Three Streetcar Expansion

Post by normalthings »

beautyfromashes wrote: Wed Dec 30, 2020 2:02 pm We should cut transportation to distant suburbs. It's a money loser and doesn't help the ultimate goal of building a vibrant city. Build the center of the city as the hub for all commerce and entertainment and both incentivize people to live close by providing free, easy transportation services and also set up disincentives to make it difficult to travel from nondense areas. Make moving back to the city both a time and money saving option.
Exoburbs are where the logistics jobs are going. We have to try and serve them.
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beautyfromashes
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Re: Phase Three Streetcar Expansion

Post by beautyfromashes »

normalthings wrote: Wed Dec 30, 2020 2:06 pm Exoburbs are where the logistics jobs are going. We have to try and serve them.
Hard to say if they are going there so we have to serve them or they are going there because we serve them.
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normalthings
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Re: Phase Three Streetcar Expansion

Post by normalthings »

beautyfromashes wrote: Wed Dec 30, 2020 2:22 pm
normalthings wrote: Wed Dec 30, 2020 2:06 pm Exoburbs are where the logistics jobs are going. We have to try and serve them.
Hard to say if they are going there so we have to serve them or they are going there because we serve them.
We serve most all of the urban ones and don’t serve many of the suburban ones. Yet, the new warehouses continue to open in the suburbs.
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Re: Phase Three Streetcar Expansion

Post by moderne »

Heard the new Transportation Sec Buttigieg talking about inner city transit for getting people to jobs. Wonder if new administration would look more favorably on a 31st/Linwood/KCVA/sports complex route?
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Re: Phase Three Streetcar Expansion

Post by flyingember »

beautyfromashes wrote: Wed Dec 30, 2020 2:02 pm We should cut transportation to distant suburbs. It's a money loser and doesn't help the ultimate goal of building a vibrant city. Build the center of the city as the hub for all commerce and entertainment and both incentivize people to live close by providing free, easy transportation services and also set up disincentives to make it difficult to travel from nondense areas. Make moving back to the city both a time and money saving option.
An urban only bus network will continue to shrink and be less relevant.


Go look at that 2018 map I linked to
You can see Troost easily on it and see how people are moving to west of Troost and are leaving east of it except for one weird outlier in Paseo Industrial.

https://www.flatlandkc.org/people-place ... nsas-city/


June 2019 was the first time ridership went up in 53 months, by 0.43%, and that was right when the system redesign was announced

https://ridekc.org/blog/strategic-plan-q2

Kansas City is currently growing by 1.33% annually. If we start with 100 people, that's 105 in four years and zero of the new residents are riding the bus. If we assume 10% bus ridership that's a 5% increase in cars on the road because the bus doesn't go where people live.

And shrinking lane miles won't cause them to move, it will just lead people to demand jobs closer to home, reducing density demands. Induced demand says people will just drive less if roads grow smaller. There isn't enough new housing downtown to move even 10,000 people there today.

And from the recent "affordable" housing project. Most people couldn't afford to move to the urban core
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Re: Phase Three Streetcar Expansion

Post by flyingember »

normalthings wrote: Wed Dec 30, 2020 2:24 pm
beautyfromashes wrote: Wed Dec 30, 2020 2:22 pm
normalthings wrote: Wed Dec 30, 2020 2:06 pm Exoburbs are where the logistics jobs are going. We have to try and serve them.
Hard to say if they are going there so we have to serve them or they are going there because we serve them.
We serve most all of the urban ones and don’t serve many of the suburban ones. Yet, the new warehouses continue to open in the suburbs.
In the proposed system Troost Max is a 15 mile bus route all the way to Hickman Mills
Riverside's new warehouses are 7.7 miles from downtown or 5.5 miles from the KCK transit center

You can't tell me there isn't demand for jobs via bus in eastern KCK neighborhood and 5.5 miles is too far to run a bus.

One weird missing route, east side to GM. Oh, there's a route from KCK but it runs hourly 5:30am to 6:30pm and not on Saturday and they often run three shifts. It's frequently is running Saturday too. We can't even support a spot with thousands of workers that are in the urban core.

The system isn't focused on ridership and the redesign isn't either. It's not connecting to blue collar jobs, it's about downtown white collar jobs.
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normalthings
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Re: Phase Three Streetcar Expansion

Post by normalthings »

KC Streetcar
We’re planning 2 #kcstreetcar extensions at the same time. And we have great partners helping us along the way @RideKCTransit
@KCMO
@portkc
Tom Gerend response:
”building” 2 while working on #3 and laying ground for #4+.... !!! Go KC Go!
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alejandro46
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Re: Phase Three Streetcar Expansion

Post by alejandro46 »

normalthings wrote: Tue Mar 23, 2021 8:16 pm KC Streetcar
We’re planning 2 #kcstreetcar extensions at the same time. And we have great partners helping us along the way @RideKCTransit
@KCMO
@portkc
Tom Gerend response:
”building” 2 while working on #3 and laying ground for #4+.... !!! Go KC Go!
Regional funding let’s make it happen...
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normalthings
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Re: Phase Three Streetcar Expansion

Post by normalthings »

Image

Tom Gerend tweeted this as what NKC and RF look like together. I think the main street line will get split heading north with some going to RF and some NKC.
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Re: Phase Three Streetcar Expansion

Post by WoodDraw »

Man, that picture just shows that there is no density going north. I'd be very reluctant to fund that.

I still think east is the way to go if you're going to do anything.
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Re: Phase Three Streetcar Expansion

Post by KCPowercat »

normalthings wrote: Thu Mar 25, 2021 3:18 pm Image

Tom Gerend tweeted this as what NKC and RF look like together. I think the main street line will get split heading north with some going to RF and some NKC.
Gotta get 9 highway to grade ASAP
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Re: Phase Three Streetcar Expansion

Post by WoodDraw »

Yeah I agree.
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Re: Phase Three Streetcar Expansion

Post by earthling »

I may have missed it somewhere but do we know yet where the Casino and NKC lines are planned to terminate on the south end? Would they terminate to Union Station or down to UMKC? Or from S end perspective, would perhaps every other train run to either Casino or NKC? Would think circling River Market goes away?
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normalthings
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Re: Phase Three Streetcar Expansion

Post by normalthings »

earthling wrote: Thu Mar 25, 2021 4:40 pm I may have missed it somewhere but do we know yet where the Casino and NKC lines are planned to terminate on the south end? Would they terminate to Union Station or down to UMKC? Or from S end perspective, would perhaps every other train run to either Casino or NKC? Would think circling River Market goes away?
I don't think it has really been determined. However, from his tweets, it sounds like north bound main street trips would split at RM and some go north to NKC and some to RF. Pretty standard set up.
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Re: Phase Three Streetcar Expansion

Post by KCPowercat »

earthling wrote: Thu Mar 25, 2021 4:40 pm I may have missed it somewhere but do we know yet where the Casino and NKC lines are planned to terminate on the south end? Would they terminate to Union Station or down to UMKC? Or from S end perspective, would perhaps every other train run to either Casino or NKC? Would think circling River Market goes away?
From what I understand when the riverfront opens no more circling. Think about the river market lines as diverged lines going north and south on different streets.

Now would everyone go all the way to the plaza? I'd guess yes
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Re: Phase Three Streetcar Expansion

Post by DaveKCMO »

IMO the NKC extension doesn't make sense on its own now, especially if regionally funded. It should be paired with an extension to downtown KCK and operated as a separate route intersecting in the middle of the loop (say, along a two-way 12th -- which was studied in 2014).
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