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The Curious Case of Kansas City Mass Transit

Today, I got a comment on one of my posts about Midwestern bus ridership. I knew bus systems were getting hammered by rising gas prices, but I decided to go see what was new in this area since I hadn’t read up on it in a while and the comment had me thinking about it. I stumbled onto this article about Kansas City’s attempt to build a new mass transit system.

A lot of people who leave comments here accuse me of being unfair to mass transit. The specific comment that got me on this subject accused me of viewing the automobile as inherently capitalist while viewing mass transit as inherently socialist. Considering that I ride mass transit nearly every day, this is completely ridiculous. By that rationale, I must be a secret socialist, and I must hate myself for loving automobiles so much. Whatever.

My point is, I stumbled onto a story that I feel exactly the opposite way about – there are a bunch of bungling, boondoggling clowns in Kansas City holding up a mass transit project that has been voted on and approved by the people, and this needs to be fixed.

Mass transit in Kansas City has a pretty rocky past. Originally, Kansas City had one of the best streetcar systems in the country, but then low ridership forced it to close down as people moved out to the suburbs. Today, there isn’t much left except a fairly limited bus system.

The idea to build light rail in the city has been bantered about seven times in the past, and each time, it has been rejected by voters. But recently, in late 2006, voters finally approved a plan for light rail that extended from the zoo through town to the airport.

This original plan was designed by a man named Clay Chastain, who now lives here in Virginia. He had been a proponent of mass transit for years and had actually worked on some of the previous failed initiatives. This time he was successful, due to a combination of factors that included the right design, and good timing as the gas crunch was beginning to gear up.

His success was short lived though. Not long after the plan was approved by voters, snotty government fingers fresh from newly empty noses began to shake and fret that the plan was too ambitious and too expensive and too impossible.

Now before I commence with my beatdown, let me give the city some credit for the valid points they have. The city claims they want to make sure the system is financially viable.

There is nothing intrinsically wrong with this. In fact, I would argue that this is actually shocking fiscal responsibility on the part of elected officials who’ve just been given a blank check to build shiny new things.

But if financial viability is a concern, we should probably start small. Mr. Chastain’s plan was 27 miles of track from the Zoo to the Airport. By contrast, the city’s newly proposed system involves 11 miles of light rail, and 67 miles of commuter rail, plus 4 miles of streetcar and 36.5 miles of express bus. So for people who claim to be concerned about the feasibility of funding, we sure are throwing a lot of eggs into one basket.

The funding for this little fiasco will amount to 1.2 Billion, as opposed to Mr. Chastain’s original 1 billion proposal that the city rejected as “too expensive”.  It also requires a bigger tax increase than originally proposed by Mr. Chastain. So the argument that Mr. Chastain’s proposal was “too expensive” also seems dubious. The city did a price assessment that brought in Mr. Chastain’s plan at $1.5 billion, but that was after they began their nay saying, and it looked like they intentionally tried to get an unfavorable assessment so they could send it back to the voters in hopes that they would kill it.

In the year and a half since the proposal was approved, there has been endless political wrangling to try to dissuade people from supporting this. Mr. Chastain has even filed a lawsuit to force the city to go forward with the will of the voters. Basically, the city tried to kill this after the people spoke, and Mr. Chastain bravely forced them to keep this on the table and deal with it. Once the bungling bureaucrats realized this wasn’t going away, they started to create their own plan to cover their asses. Basically, it gives them an out. They hope to get away without egg on their faces for defying the voters, and they hope to be able to do it while saying that they were correct that the original plan wasn’t viable, and that’s why it took two years for them to move their sorry asses.

As it stands now, Mayor Funkhouser wants to push forward with a tri-county vote in November to approve his new plan – note, this will be two years after voters said overwhelmingly that they wanted this done. But not everyone is on board, there are still several members of local governments that are hoping to delay this vote until 2009, if not 2010. To be clear, that would be four years after the original vote before the sorry politicians in Kansas City begin to move their lazy asses.

They are getting away with this because as usual, this process is mired in an endless maze of committees, governance groups, political action groups, and politicians trying to suck up to ensure their next term in office getting fat off of your tax dollars.

This is shameful. The citizens of Kansas City spoke almost two years ago. And they voted for mass transit. The elected officials of Kansas City would do well to remember that they are public servants. Legitimate votes from the populace typically aren’t suggestions as much as marching orders.