November 10th, 2008 | Category:
Election
- Urban Society's Kevin Klinkenberg chimes in with a Think Smaller approach at The Kansas City Post.
- The Star's Yael Abouhalkah and Kevin Collison also have it figured out. Also of note: the Star retracted its support for Mayor Funkhouser — who confirmed he will carry forward with a regional transit vote in 2009 — and buried it on Saturday's editorial page.
- Fox 4's Monica Evans attempts to do the issue justice, barely raising the very low bar set by local broadcast news.
- Prime Buzz points out that we're definitely in the minority of transit-hostile cities last week.
Has nobody suggested racism as a possible reason why light rail was defeated. The question asked by several billboards around town, “It goes where,” was absurd. No reasonable person could think that a 14 mile line through the densest part of the metro could fail to go someplace that somebody NEEDED to go. Yet this 14 mile starter line would have enabled people from the inner city to get to the intersection of North Oak and Vivion in about fifteen minutes.
the campaign committee made a lot of errors.
one was not calling out the opposition on their patently false claim that in order to “keep our buses” voters should vote “no” on light rail.
another was to let the 14-mile starter line be characterized as running from nowhere to nowhere. in fact, it was two starter lines converging on the greatest concentration of jobs and other popular destinations in the entire region.
i think the campaign thought they could deliver a slam dunk victory if they just put out some mailers, some emails, some yard signs, and a handful of billboards.