dukuboy1 wrote: ↑Tue Jun 06, 2023 10:33 pm
FlippantCitizen wrote: ↑Mon Jun 05, 2023 7:31 pm
If any light rail plan calls for massive park and ride craters next to expensive stations is a no for me dog
Curious, does the train stop outside everyone’s home? Is there a small station on every block? I’m just curious how you expect people to get to the train to use it? Everyone Ubers or takes a cab? Walk, ride a bike, electric scooter? Point being there will have to be some kind of station somewhere to allow for residents to gather and get on the train. Commuter rail station of sorts.
Now if the plan is just to serve out of town business & leisure travelers to get from airport to downtown hotels and attractions then cool no need to worry about stations because it’s just a people mover on railroad tracks, which honestly is all it needs to be. But I’m curious how the citizens of KC can use this people mover
You are asking for a transit system to accommodate a type of development and a lifestyle that was intentionally designed to be hostile to transit, and the real answer to your concerns is that this is why a rail line through the Northland doesn't really make sense in the first place. But if we imagine a fantasy world in which KC does build a train to the airport, the plan should be to consolidate population in high-density development around the rails. A train to KCI isn't "just to serve out of town business & leisure travelers," but nor is it for "citizens of KC" who stubbornly insist on staying at the end of a quiet cul-de-sac. It would be a transformative project that would need to serve citizens of KC living in dense, urban neighborhoods that don't even exist yet. If people staying in the sprawl want to ride the train too, then sure, take an uber or ride a bike. Or you could beef up bus service on the major arterials and create easements through people's oversized yards to facilitate easier access to those arterials from inside the subdivision, as one possible way to improve transit within the suburbs.
But those people clinging to their suburban dreams are not going to use the train anyway, with or without P&R. In a city like KC, where driving and parking are so cheap and easy, what are the use cases for it? I pretty much only see two: 1) if P&R is cheaper than airport parking, people might park there and take the train the rest of the way, in which case it basically just operates as a parking subsidy that reduces airport revenue; 2) people might take it into the urban core during unicorn events like WS/SB parades that actually do make it difficult to drive and park. Neither of these justifies the cost of building a train. You might see scattered other users -- people who simply like riding trains, or who drive to the train every once in a while to save a little when gas prices spike, or whatever -- but I don't see how P&R lots at train stations in a Northland that otherwise continues to look the way it does today generate the thousands of daily riders needed for a train to work. Which brings us back to "a rail line through the Northland doesn't really make sense in the first place." But as long as we're going to fantasize, we might as well go all-in and fantasize about KC as a real urban city, instead of making the fantasy as shitty as possible by needlessly catering to cars.