What a week. The heat finally broke, and all souls in Kansas City can breathe a sigh of relief. But it's worth remembering that the past week not only brought us two 100+ days but also KC's first-ever red ozone alert (the alert was red, not the ozone). Considering the fact that the majority of ground level ozone comes from the cars some many of us around here love to drive, we might take advantage of this brief cool spell to consider our transit options.
Early in the week, the Star's Steve Penn wrote a column comparing Smart Moves, a transit plan (or laxative) offered by the MidAmerica Regional Council with a plan backed by Clay Chastain.
Chastain has made news around here recently by returning from self-imposed exile in Tennessee to promote yet another light rail initiative for Kansas City. (He also managed to complicate things for local blogger Heidi recently one last time before she leaves town.)
I haven't read Chastain's plan but apparently in addition to light rail and electric shuttles it features gondolas that run from Penn Valley Park to Union Station. Apart from helpfully adding words like "funicular" to the local vocabulary, I can't see what purpose this would serve. Maybe if the cars were shaped like shuttlecocks...
Penn's take: Smart Moves doable but dull, Chastain crazy but creative (alliteration ladled by Lee). But isn't that always the way?
[By the way, no comparisons intended but seeing as there are wikipedia entries on Walt Bodine, Charles Wheeler and even Tech N9ne, I think it's high time somebody put together one on Chastain. Don't all volunteer at once.]
Transit is a guaranteed snoozer of a topic in Kansas City, but I boldly offer this link to a pre-blog Daytripper column.
It concerns another dreamer from long ago whose bronze backside is pictured above: William B. Strang. You might call him the father of Overland Park and by extension of the Johnson County suburbs where thousands wait everyday to turn left into a enormous parking lot.
Like Chastain, Strang was a man with big plans (and some pretty florid marketing). Back at the turn of the previous century, he built a movie studio, an aviation company and (more to the point) a commuter rail line to lure Kansas City residents out to homes in OP, KS.
That's right: public transit made our 'burbs what they are today. Moreover, when planned right, transit pays a community back with returns much better than an Olympics or a Superbowl or a World Series.
Lee, you made up that strange Strang mass transit business, didn't you? I refuse to believe it.
ReplyDeleteHap: Not half as strange as the marketing materials ("Are You the Sordid Sort?"), which are all available at the JoCo Historical Society for unbelievers like yourself.
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