Help guide the Council
Project manager? Check. Committee chair? Check. Task Force? Check. Public forums? Check.
…but one thing is palpably clear, there is still no true champion for light rail in Kansas City. The leadership vacuum leaves the responsibility in your hands: send a message to the mayor and council that you want an alternative plan before the existing Chastain Plan is repealed. Voters clearly don't want the actual Chastain Plan, but it is leverage to keep the Council focused on this issue so they stop making excuses that it's just too complex. We are still hopeful that news like yesterday's Platte County announcement means light rail is still a hot topic, but we've been here before. Taking the lead (vs. simply filling the lead role) is risky, but the payoff for this kind of risk was in plain view at last week's Sprint Center opening… former Mayor Kay Barnes fought the odds on a new tax and garnered the most applause from the crowd, and it will likely pay off even more in her run for Congress.
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The reason no one will champion Light Rail is that the cost is to high. If we do a 6 mile stater line and it takes 25 years to pay for it that won’t get transit for KC much less the rest of the 300 sq miles of KC. Someone need to talk about what can be paid for not pie in the sky.
Light rail contributes a halo effect to transit in the entire region. Is convention business pie in the sky? Was the Sprint Center pie in the sky? Those are both expensive, long-term initiatives that don’t have a direct or immediate affect on the entire 300 square miles of KC, but everyone agrees that they are generally beneficial.
But if you can only build 6 miles every 25 years you won’t get much done.
Let me get this straight…you want to go through all the time, effort and money to build a light-rail system, in a city where no one rides the bus??
yes, we do.
So do you know what going broke does for a city ? We will spend millions for light rail which only maybe only 1% of the people using it and have that money taken away from are roads which 99% of the people use.
Dave you can’t run a business like that.
Cities like Boston,Chicago,and New York have over a million riders a day. In our case it take a month to reach a million riders,our best week-end for bus ridership is when the Chiefs play.[ten times a year] One of the few times you see full buses.
yes, we know about new york in the 70s. we also know that diversified and dedicated funding for transit will keep these agencies solvent.
also:
a) light rail won’t get built without federal matching funds
b) a new dedicated transit sales tax will fund bus service
c) the chiefs express is not the only full bus in the city
once again, northlander, make a decision about your support for public transit. if you want to see our system improved, it needs a mode that will attract new riders where there is existing job and housing density. if you don’t want to see it improved, stop reading this site and vote no on all upcoming light rail questions, because we’re not changing our tune anytime soon.