Kansas City Bicycle Log

Posts, email, and ideas related to bicycling and bicycle advocacy.



I post these mostly for my own convenience in being able to keep them archived and searchable, but if you get some use of them, more power to you!

Among other interesting items here is a fairly complete record of my involvement with the grassroots effort in support of the BikeKC initiative in the Summer of 2002.

You can find everything from press releases to letters to the city council to exhortations to other bicyclists to write letters to the editor. See what worked well and what caused us problems in the effort to pass BikeKC.

From my point of view, this was almost a picture-perfect grass-roots movement. The result was that BikeKC was passed on August 15th, 2002.

Now we have to work to make sure the plan becomes reality!

Most of that is in the 8/25/2002-8/31/2002 archive.

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Sunday, August 25, 2002
 
[This is the letter that really got the ball rolling for me, in regards to BikeKC.]

There is an interesting column in today's KCStar by Mike Hendricks, about the latest developments in the Bike KC plan.

I hope everyone will take time to write KC council members in support of the plan--even just a short note, phone message, or email message would help.

By the way, I think we have to give Ed Ford a lot of credit. He doesn't favor the Bike KC proposals (see his comments at http://www.bikekc.org/), and could have used his influence as Chairman of the Planning, Zoning, and Economic Development Council to try to single-handedly squash the proposal. Yet, even though he has a strong opinion on the matter, he is open to discussion and opinions of other council members and Kansas City residents, and he wants to learn more about the issue. If only EVERY politician would work this way . . .

You can read the entire KCStar article at: http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/news/local/3588452.htm

Here are a few excerpts from the article:

The Kansas City Council agreed late last week to push ahead with Bike KC, otherwise known as the Kansas City Bicycle Transportation Initiative.

The plan wasn't approved, nor was it killed. The latter's significant. For when we last checked in on this back in November, Bike KC had collided head-on with a Ford, as in Ed Ford, the city councilman from up north.

. . .

By making the streets safe for cyclists, the city was encouraging more bikes on the streets, which was unsafe because of all the traffic. That's how Ford saw it, anyway.

And he could have stopped it right there. Instead, Ford allowed Bike KC to come before the full City Council on Thursday to see how others felt.

The message is that the rest of the council is open to hashing it out. So now it goes back before Ford's committee -- to be heard either July 24 or July 31 -- and then comes up for a vote of the full council, with or without a recommendation, sometime after that.

"I think it's better than `not dead,' " said Paul Mohr, the Housing and Community Development Department's representative on the committee that put together the bike plan.

But for Bike KC to succeed, it will take an enthusiastic, but polite, lobbying campaign.

That's where you bicyclists come in. Send letters in care of the City Council, 414 E. 12th St., 24th Floor, Kansas City, Mo. 64106. Or phone (816) 513-1368 to talk to a council member or find an e-mail address.

. . .
posted by Brent Hugh at Sunday, August 25, 2002 | permanently archived here

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