Central Business Corridor Transit Plan FOCUS Transit Team

Jerry Heaster's Kansas City Star column of 6/9/00 flies in the face of widely held positions on public transit among many urban analysts: where most practitioners today, urban designers, urban lawyers, planners and transportation engineers see transit as an investment in the rebuilding of disinvested urban centers and a stimulus to more fiscally conservative suburban growth, Heaster's source, Thomas J. Di Lorenzo, holds that transit falls short of these and a number of other evaluation criteria. Di Lorenzo is author of eight books, a conservative academic affiliated with several institutions including the Center For The Study of American Business, which "believes in free markets and works to increase public understanding of the private enterprise system".

To support this position Heaster cites a number of Di Lorenzo's statistics which appear to show that transit is a poor investment. Especially interesting is Heaster's statement that "…public transit's share of urban passenger miles has shrunk from 30 percent in 1945 to 2 percent today." That should come as no surprise to anyone who is experiencing rising congestion even in Kansas City's generous freeway system. For the past forty years we have poured massive subsidies into our automobile transportation infrastructure, fought wars to maintain the free flow of petroleum to fuel our cars and promoted in every way the attraction to automobile ownership. ..all at the expense of transit investment.

The $150 billion which Heaster cites being spent to build public transit since the mid-1960's pales in comparison to that which we have spent in road, bridge and petroleum subsidies. And those who are responsible for the maintenance of our road and bridge systems indicate that we are woefully in arrears in this category, an additional cost which we are currently avoiding and which will further increase the real cost of our automobile transportation system as we begin to deal with it.

If we would look at our automobile transportation system with the same lenses Heaster uses on transit, we would conclude that it too is "…so manifestly wasteful (that it) would have long since been scrapped as an intolerable drain on society's resources".

Other Evidence Tells A Different Story
A critical review of these statistics does not support their use in denigrating public transit investment: To say that "…building a light-rail project here would prove just as wasteful an exercise as similar projects have proved to be elsewhere" is to ignore the reality of numerous cities who are making this investment. On October 3rd of last year the Dallas Morning News reported that "DART rail is seeding development throughout the Dallas area", and cites eight projects being initiated along their new rail lines. The February 8th 1999 Denver Business Journal reported that "Business owners and residents in lower downtown are close to raising $250,000 to extend the 16th Street Mall shuttle to Union Station… Landowners in the (Central Platte) valley…have contributed another $4.5 million worth of right of way…(they) aren't giving just to be generous…(they are) counting on more pedestian traffic and visits from those turned off by tight parking…(they) expect to see an increase in property values."

Listen to the Voters
Some twelve urban light rail systems have been developed in the United States over the past 18 years, and the voters in most of those cities have not only voted to tax themselves to raise the local matching funds for their planning, design, construction and operation, but have voted again, after inauguration of the first lines, to extend these lines into other neighborhoods. Even after a Grand Jury report in Orange County, California frightened voters in some Orange County communities into rejecting their proposed transit plan, the Orange County Transportation Authority continues with voter approval to plan for the construction of some 15 miles of light rail. And even the lay-generated transit petitions which have been put on Kansas City's ballots over the past few years have generated significant voter support.

Frustration with Growing Road Congestion
A great source of this kind of voter support is a growing public realization that urban transportation problems, especially congestion, are not being addressed by adding more road capacity. The active Johnson County Commuter Rail initiative is reflective of this realization. The Johnson County Commission's rejection of the Twentieth Century Parkway also suggests a waning confidence in the power of more roads to solve transportation problems. Kansas City's Northland/Downtown Major Investment Study is grappling with the congestion of the Missouri River bridges, and is finding that the introduction of more lane capacity will only exacerbate the congestion problem by squeezing this added traffic into the already cramped rights-of-way north and south of these bridges.

Transit for those with Special Needs
Heaster's suggestion that transportation subsidy to be focused on "…individual special needs transit…economically disadvantaged, the disabled or the elderly unable to get around on their own" fails to recognize the impact which our automobile-dominant system has had on the quality of our lives. When we drive everywhere we are segregated from others and when we get to our destination we have to store our car in a parking lot which also distances us from others. The result is the separation of our communities in a way which makes the vibrancy which we admire in European cities or places like San Francisco impossible. There are now over 250 million cars in the United States, one for every man, woman and child in the nation, and for each of those cars we have built eight parking spaces.

It is true that these disadvantaged groups need to be served, but as in most of our other social policies we have begun to realize the positive benefits of "mainstreaming" people with special needs, not segregating them. It is the sameness and lack of diversity in our suburban communities which our younger generation is finding too bland for their liking, and the source of the resurgence we are seeing in our urban centers.

Growing Real Estate Investment in the Urban Centers
There is a clear, growing trend in many of Kansas City's competitor cities, Minneapolis, Denver, Dallas, Houston, showing highly active urban residential development markets. The fact that these cities are each in various stages of developing high-density transit systems suggests their realization that transit investments will compliment this market reality. Jeff Spivak has recently reported in the Kansas City Star that real estate at Kansas City's urban center is growing in value at a faster rate than suburban real estate, and an urban residential trend is quietly developing here too. The Downtown Council's 1998 survey showed strong market interest in urban housing. While the "me too" syndrome is never sound policy, there is sound rationale in studying how these other cities are trying to deal with this growing activity in their urban centers.

How Should We Proceed in Kansas City?
The first fact to keep in mind in Kansas City is that there is as yet no decision on whether to build or if so, what kind of transit technology to utilize. Raising concern about "light rail" now is premature.

The Central Business Corridor Transit Plan is not promoting light rail; it is studying a wide variety of approaches to relieving the perceived transportation problems facing the whole community. There is, however, a conviction in FOCUS Kansas City comprehensive plan that public transit can play a role in the development and redevelopment of this city, that we need to offer an attractive choice in transportation modes , alternatives to the automobile, a more balanced transportation policy.

Is no-build a viable decision? Is light rail right for Kansas City? Should we choose another technology? Should it be on Main or Broadway or Grand or Troost or Prospect or Volker? How does it interface with Johnson County's Commuter Rail plan, or KCATA's growing bus service? Is there a role for a system of bikeways? How far will we walk to a transit stop? Should vehicles arrive at 7 or 10 or 20 minute intervals? What economic development objectives should we anticipate from this investment? How long will it take to build?

With the team of citizen leaders which Mayor Barnes has asked to serve and with the transportation and urban design experts on their consultant team and following the pattern of public participation which 3,000 Kansas City volunteers pioneered in FOCUS, this community can anticipate the discovery of answers which will be broadly acceptable and probably exciting.