Current Issues > Transportation

Let's Go KC works to get new KCMO Development Code Ordinance to include Pedestrian and Bicycle Aemenities
The Thomas Hart Benton Group of the Sierra Club has recently joined Let's Go KC, a Kansas City based grass roots alliance for transportation choice.

Kansas City, Missouri is revising it's development code for the first time since the 1950s. Members of Let's Go KC have been working with city staff for a year and a half to incorporate bicycle and pedestrian amenities in the development code to bring it up to date with other cities. Our concerns are bicycle parking for long and short term, traffic impact analysis to include pedestrians, transit and bicycles (see Complete Streets) and streamway buffers for future trails and water quality.

Key issues
Long-Term Bike Parking
Bicycle parking is an essential component for transportation choice. The proposed ordinance currently contains adequate provisions for short-term bicycle parking; inverted-U racks near the entrances of stores, offices, schools, and multi-family residences will serve visitors and customers.
The conflict is with long-term parking for employees of business and the residents of multi-unit buildings. We want to require secure, weatherproof parking in rooms or lockers. In the current draft of the new ordinance, long-term bike parking will not be required for multi-unit residential buildings. For example, in a 40-unit apartment building downtown, cyclists would have to continue to hang their bikes from a hook in a living room or bedroom, rather than storing the bike in a secure room on the ground floor near an entrance.

Traffic Analysis
Along with accommodating trucks and cars, new developments and major renovations need to also address the needs of pedestrians, bicyclists and users of public transit. Traffic planners use a traffic impact analysis for this purpose and employ the term "level of service" (LOS) to determine a facility’s design related to traffic counts and situations. Read more...

New Paseo Bridge to include Space for Bike/Pedestrian Lane
Sierra Club together with Let's Go KC and other bicycle/pedestrian advocates have been working to help create the first safe bicycle and pedestrian crossing of the Missouri River in the Kansas City area. Plans for the new, $255 million Paseo Bridge project were announced recently. Construction on the bridge will start in early 2008 and will be finished in Oct. 2011. Read more...

Agreement Announced to Link KATY Trail to Pleasant Hill, MO
November 28, 2007, the Department of Natural Resources (DNR), the Attorney General's Office, and AmerenUE announced an agreement regarding the Taum Sauk dam disaster.

The agreement includes about $180 million in reparation payments from Ameren.

Included in the settlement is the agreement to give DNR usage of a portion of the Rock Island corridor needed to connect the Katy Trail to Pleasant Hill, Missouri. Pleasant Hill is on the edge of the Kansas City metropolitan area. Read more...

An eight-lane I-70? That's what they want now...
by Ron McLinden  The Missouri Department of Transportation (MoDOT) has nearly completed environmental studies required for re-building 200 miles of I-70 across Missouri as a six-lane facility. The anticipated cost is in the $2.5 to $3.0 billion range.
But even before that gets underway, MoDOT and its friends are promoting a plan to make I-70 an eight-lane highway, with four of those lanes dedicated to truck traffic. Read more...

Missouri Transportation Funding
Executive Summary:
MoDOT is looking for more money for its highway system. Two proposals for highway funding were introduced in the General Assembly this year: both involved an increase in the sales tax; both had 8-lane interstates with 4 lanes reserved for trucks as their centerpiece; one included nothing for transit or other non-highway modes, while the other included a mere 2 percent. If the General Assembly fails again next year to put a funding proposal on the August, 2008, ballot, it's anticipated that highway interests will put their own proposal on the ballot through the initiative process. These issues will be discussed at a "Transportation Funding Summit " to be held in Jeff City on July 31. The summit is free and is sponsored by the Joint Committee on Transportation Oversight of the General Assembly. It's important that representatives of constituencies other than highway interests attend the July 31 summit to demonstrate the needs of other modes. Read more...

Letter to Pete Rahn, Director of Missouri Department of Transportation
Re: Transportation Funding Summit

Pete--

I enjoyed seeing you again Monday at the MTD/AIM Transportation Funding Summit in Jeff City.

I attended with Margie Richcreek as a representative of the Kansas City Regional Transit Alliance. That explains why I didn't say anything about climate change. As you may recall from my testimony at the House Transportation Committee hearing on May 8, there will be profound shifts in transportation patterns and mode choices as the world's economies act to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Read more...

Letter to MARC Total Transportation Policy Committee (PDF document)
(May 29, 1990)
To: Total Transportation Policy Committee, MARC
From: Environmental Leaders Forum
Subject: MARC 2010 Long Range Transportation Plan (Highway Element)
We are writing to express our concerns about the MARC 2010 Long Range Transportation Plan (Highway Element). Kansas City's major environmental organizations oppose the plan in its present form, and we ask that MARC not adopt a highway plan until a significantly different alternate plan is prepared for consideration. Read more... (PDF document)

Sensible Transportation Alternatives for Kansas City ...and for our Environment (PDF document)
(Earth Week flyer, April, 1990)
Our public and private transportation decisions shape our city, and city form in turn helps determine the quality of our lives and the impact which we have on the natural environment. When we take it for granted that the private automobile is to be the dominant transportation mode, then our cities grow in such a way that it becomes increasingly hard to go anywhere without a car. Read more... (PDF document)