[To Nick Haines, who heads a weekly program about Kansas City news on the public television station.]
Mr. Haines,
I appreciate your consideration of the BikeKC issue for your program.
I am enclosing a letter I wrote to the KCStar outlining my reasons for supporting the plan (see below). See http://www.bikekc.org/ for details about the BikeKC plan.
Matters will almost certainly come to a head at the City Council within a week or two, so the issue is timely. It is planned to come before the Planning, Zoning and Economic Development either July 24th or July 31st.
You may also be interested to know that there is an interesting and revealing political angle to the story. BikeKC is the result of years of effort, first under FOCUS Kansas City and then much planning and sweating of the details by KC Public Works staff.
It seems a natural and relatively non-controversial modern transportation plan, of the sort many other (better run . . . ) cities have had in place for years or even decades. Furthermore, as soon as BikeKC is in place we can start applying for millions in federal funds (usually 90% or 95% of the total project cost) to get much of the work done. By delaying, we are costing ourselves millions.
And, according to TEA-21 (Transportation Equity Act for the 21st Century, see http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/tea21/), we are supposed to have a bicycle transportation plan in place in order to be eligible for federal transportation funds. Of course we *don't* have one in place--BikeKC is it.
Yet BikeKC has been on the table now for almost a year without going anywhere. Supporters have lobbied hard and, on one occasion, filled the City Council Chamber over 1/2 full for a simple committee meeting. There is a lot of grass-roots support for this issue.
So why hasn't it gone anywhere?
Apparently, developers (particularly in the Northland, where there is a lot of development going on) got wind of the proposal and didn't like the idea of giving up 10 feet or so extra right-of-way for roads in new developments. This, of course, is going to cost them money.
(Also, this sort of planning for the future is absolutely key to the proposal, because one reason we are in such a tremendous transportation mess right now is because city leaders 10, 20, 30, 40, and 50 years ago "forgot" to plan transportation infrastructure in any reasonable way. Only the short-term interests of developers was considered and the result is neighborhood after neighborhood with streets too narrow even for motor vehicles--with increasing population, some of these have even developed into high-speed arterials now--and no thought at all of the needs of pedestrians or bicyclists.)
Developers who learned of the right-of-way issue talked to a few City Council members and suddenly there was strong resistance to the plan among a few key council members.
BikeKC supporters describe the change as rather dramatic--polite interest but no strong opinions on the topic among city council members at one committee meeting, suddenly changing to strong opinions and many reservations at the next meeting.
The issue was tabled about last November. It is only being re-visited now at the special request of the Mayor.
Apparently there are still some negotiations going on, involving a reduction in the amount of right-of-way developers would have to give up. If the provisions for additional right-of-way are reduced or eliminated, certain key council members will support the measure, or, even if not "support", at least refrain from using parliamentary tactics to kill it.
So if BikeKC is killed or eviscerated, this could be seen as a fine example of business as usual in KC government. Money wins.
On the other hand, if it survives and passes it can be seen as a victory for grass-roots action and evidence of vision, leadership, and responsiveness to citizen concerns over moneyed narrow interests at city hall.
As you can see from the letter below, I am still hopeful that city hall can act with vision and leadership, especially with a little prodding from concerned citizens.
(By the way, a little mouse told me a number of the details mentioned above, in "off the record" mode, so take them for what they're worth. But the general outline of the problem is well known around city hall and much of it can even be found in Mike Hendricks's recent KCStar article at
.)
Thank you again for your attention.
Dr. Brent Hugh
bhugh@mwsc.edu
posted by Brent Hugh at
Sunday, August 25, 2002 |
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