Advocate has long history of failed petition initiatives for a KC rail system
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Clay Chastain has repeatedly proposed citizen-led rail and transit initiatives in Kansas.
- Most of Chastain’s ballot proposals over two decades have been rejected by voters.
- Chastain ran for mayor five times, earning just under 20% in the 2023 general election.
Prolific petitioner Clay Chastain is pitching another plain to bring an extensive rail system to Kansas City through a citizen-led initiative petition.
The newest plan marks another entry into Chastain’s many proposals over the last two decades, none of which have come to fruition. Chastain’s many previous proposals that reached ballots have mostly fallen flat with voters.
In the most recent vote on one of Chastain’s proposals, about nine years ago, voters overwhelmingly rejected increasing sales taxes to fund a light rail system for the city. At the time, Chastain said it would be his last attempt.
“It signals to me the end of my era of activism in trying to provide the people with a more green, prosperous and transit-oriented Kansas City,” Chastain said at the time.
Roughly six months later, he proposed a plan for gondolas. That proposal would have closed all roads in Penn Valley Park, including Broadway, to make way for gondola lifts that would connect various points in the city.
The gondola plan was Chastain’s 11th Kansas City petition in two decades of transit activism. A few months later, he pitched another plan that featured a “virtual rail” system that utilized driverless buses.
Voters have rejected almost all of Chastain’s plans that have made the ballot. The only plan voters supported in 2006 did not involve a tax increase and instead reallocated an existing bus tax. However, the City Council at the time repealed the measure and called it unworkable.
Chastain has also repeatedly run for mayor. He most recently ran against Lucas in 2023, earning just under 20% of the vote. That was his fifth campaign and the first time he made it to the general election.
Chastain was also barred from voting in that election because his Virginia license did not meet the Missouri voter ID requirements.
