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Only last year, KC Mayor Mark Funkhouser tendered an olive branch to light-rail proponent Clay Chastain: Join forces on a regional plan rather than going with Chastain’s voter-approved, soon-to-be-City Council-nixed plan, and a depot would be named after Chastain.
Chastain passed on that, but he now thinks Funk’s regional light-rail concept is superior to the KCATA’s diminutive streetcar starter system.
So is it too late for the two mavericks to hook up?
“I would welcome the support of anybody in the United States, including the man from Virginia,” Funkhouser says. “Absolutely. We had an hour-and-a-half conversation in which he could have joined up with me, and I’d have been happy to have him. But he told me to get lost.”
Chastain continues to pursue a lawsuit against the city over the repeal, and he plans to host a forum in June on his new regional plan. However, they still have one thing in common with each other and with streetcar and light-rail experts nationwide.
“We’re not doing streetcars. I don’t want to do streetcars,” Funkhouser says. “I want to do a multimodal transit system that links suburban communities to downtown and that meets the transportation needs of Kansas Citians. At some point you can add streetcars to a system, but you can’t start with streetcars. We need to move people pretty significant distances, and you can’t do that with streetcars.”
Why then are streetcars getting such a big push against even the advice of experts and domestic streetcar manufacturers?
“There’s a whole line of logic — a whole group of people who are transit backers — who think the whole point of light rail is to make it as small and cheap as possible,” Funkhouser says. “They think that’s the (only) way to get voters to vote for it. But I think they’re wrong. They’ve got it completely backward.”
Oh, and memo to regional light-rail handwringers: Relax. Funk is already on record that he will support a starter line if he can’t get his regional plan together by summer.
And to those who worry that the economy will keep voters from supporting a half-cent tax for light rail in November, look no further than gas prices, the Middle East and all those youthful voters likely to turn out in November with Obama likely on the ballot.
“Some people keep saying, ‘Where’s the plan?’ ” Funkhouser says of his forthcoming strategy. “I don’t think it’s appropriate for me to walk in and drop a plan on people’s laps.
“We need to work and collaborate on the details. (Chastain) goes out and makes up a bunch of details that nobody had any input on, and that’s great if you’re king. But the whole idea of a democracy is, we work together to come up with something. We are doing a poll now to determine what level of support there is for a regional system. And we’ll have (the results) by our (May 30) meeting.”
Thanks but no thanks
Despite claims by the KU athletic department that 100,000 people flocked to downtown Lawrence for the basketball team’s championship parade last month, Lawrence merchants told the Lawrence Journal-World they would not be coughing up the $6,400 KU owes the Holidome for canceling its basketball banquet there in favor of a parade and celebration at Allen Fieldhouse.
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