Light rail, meet heavy rail

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Chastain said he wants the council to ask voters in April to approve his new proposal. He also wants the council to guarantee that mortgage banker Jim Nutter Sr. will drop his efforts to overturn Chastain’s plan.

“I had to give up some of the soul of my plan in order to save the idea of light rail being implemented in the city,” Chastain, who now lives in Bedford, Va., said in a telephone interview. “My fear was if we didn’t make a compromise, we might never get light rail in Kansas City, and that was worth giving up my dream for gondolas and my dream for a pastoral park.”

Chastain said Kansas City residents need resolution when it comes to light rail.

“We tried to be as reasonable as possible to give the city a chance to do the right thing,” he said. “The public is getting worn out with the issue.”

Councilman Ed Ford, who is leading the council’s light-rail efforts, was not impressed.

Not renewing the 3/8 -cent sales tax for bus service “is a nonstarter,” Ford said. Also, Chastain’s initial spine is too long, he said.

Tunnel idea

City Councilman Russ Johnson said he doesn’t know if it’s feasible to build a subway system in Kansas City, but he feels obliged to find out.

Johnson wants engineers promoting the idea and those questioning it to “get into the same room, and we can debate it out.”

Indeed, Johnson and council members Ed Ford and Jan Marcason had been scheduled to meet with Frank on Friday morning before that meeting was postponed.

Frank produced a preliminary study of the subway idea in 2005, complete with renderings of a subway station near Union Station and Crown Center, as well as graphics of the Bethany Falls limestone layer that runs beneath Kansas City.

Frank’s study — produced at a time many considered light rail to be dead — argued that rail transit was necessary to address Kansas City’s problems, including social equity, community development and energy sustainability. Kansas City “lacks one of the main selling points of a metropolitan area — an efficient mass transit system,” he wrote with co-author Brody Weber.

A subway system offers greater speed and transit benefits than buses or light rail, Frank said. It would use faster, heavier rail cars like those in the Washington’s Metro or Atlanta’s MARTA.

“Riding the length of the system form 95th and Troost to the City Market would take less than 20 minutes, a speed difficult to achieve even by car!” he wrote.

His route of about 15 miles — running from the River Market area to Interstate 435, south of Bannister — would cost $780 million to $880 million to construct, he estimated.

Frank said he has presented his study to numerous city leaders, from former mayor Charles B. Wheeler to current mayor Mark Funkhouser and his chief of staff, Ed Wolf, an engineer. But so far, he’s not found any traction for the idea.

“We feel this idea is very viable, it’s correct,” said Frank, whose son is Thomas Frank, author of What’s the Matter With Kansas?

Frank, a Kansas City native, said he has spent countless hours and money researching his plan. He could have been making money doing engineering work for suburban developers who normally employ him. But Frank said he was compelled to keep pushing the subway concept.

“This city needs something,” he said.

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To reach Michael Mansur, call 816-234-4433 or send e-mail to mmansur@kcstar.com. To reach DeAnn Smith, call 816-234-4412 or send e-mail to dsmith@kcstar.com.