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Subways, a revised Chastain plan — the city’s light-rail tangle just got more complex, and definitely more interesting.
As the city prepares to dive back this week into coming up with a light-rail proposal, the past week showed just how wide open the city’s transit future has become.
Light-rail activist Clay Chastain updated his compromise plan — and offered not to sue the city if the Kansas City Council places a compromise version of his plan before voters in April.
What’s more, an entirely new idea about building a rail transit system emerged last week: tunneling to create a subway system of fast heavy-rail cars.
Council members are expected to hold a special meeting Thursday to discuss the future of light rail, including the timing of a special election. Another meeting has been scheduled for Jan. 3 to talk with lobbyists about efforts to get federal funding.
Last month, the council repealed the Chastain plan and vowed to give voters another plan sometime next year. A citizens task force has produced a proposed starter line for Kansas City that recently was presented to the council.
On Friday, three council members were scheduled to meet with engineer Lloyd H. Frank about the subway idea, but inclement weather caused the city to postpone the meeting.
The Kansas City Area Transportation Authority is taking the idea seriously.
John Dobies, project manager of the ATA’s light-rail study team, said Friday that the subway idea will be explored by enlisting more engineering expertise on whether it would be feasible to tunnel in limestone layers beneath Kansas City.
Dobies said he thinks subway construction would prove too costly, but some engineers have proposed that such a system might be built in Kansas City for little more than what a new light-rail system operating on the surface might cost.
“The study team believes that there’s enough interest in this idea that it should be looked at,” Dobies said. “We’re obligated to … come up with a cost.”
Dobies said the analysis of the subway idea should begin in January.
The council, at the task force’s urging, voted last month to repeal Clay Chastain’s plan, which was approved by voters in November 2006. The council delayed placing an alternative before voters, but it has pledged to do so by November 2008.
Chastain said last week that he would give the council until Thursday to accept the new compromise he has offered. Otherwise, he’ll go to court to try to win back his plan.
Chastain’s new compromise includes these changes from the plan voters approved in 2006:
•Dropping his ideas for gondolas and no traffic in Penn Valley Park.
•Adding a streetcar line section connecting the East Side with the Country Club Plaza. The rest of the system would remain traditional light rail.
•The spine would still stretch from Swope Park to Kansas City International Airport, but city planners would determine the exact route, much of which had been specified in the original plan. The spine could be built in stages as funding becomes available.
•The city would work to develop a regional transportation system that connects Jackson County to Union Station and Lee’s Summit to Swope Park, and that offers “major transit service” that connects Johnson and Wyandotte counties to Union Station.
•The city would develop new financing for its bus system. Like the original plan, this one would use the 3/8 -cent sales tax that currently helps fund buses. With the economy sputtering, Chastain doubts voters would raise new taxes for light rail.
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