Reasons to support KC's MetroGreen plan

MoBikeFed Executive Director Brent Hugh's article in Friday's Kansas City Star outlines the reasons for supporting KC's MetroGreen trails and greenways initiative:

Trail plan deserves to advance, not to die
By Brent Hugh
Special to The Star

It is deeply disappointing and a blow to the entire area that a few city leaders are trying to scuttle an effort to create a truly metrowide, coordinated program to build the proposed MetroGreen greenway and trails network (“Planners revise bistate tax proposal,” 1/28).

The original proposal was to make MetroGreen funding a small but important part of the regional SmartMoves transit funding proposal. Now some leaders want to pull MetroGreen from the larger proposal.

This is not a smart move. Here is why:

* MetroGreen has proven strong support throughout the metropolitan area. It brings a balance to the overall proposal — a balance that will be sorely needed when it comes time to ask voters to actually pass a tax referendum.

* The MetroGreen plan has a huge impact for a very small cost. MetroGreen would only be about 15 percent of the total SmartMoves package yet would build several hundred miles of interconnected recreational trails and improve streamways to aid in storm water management and improved water quality throughout the entire region.

* The full proposal, including MetroGreen, has been warmly received in the usually skeptical Missouri General Assembly.

* The funding plan includes a provision for funds raised in each county to be spent on local projects. The MetroGreen plan is the best of regional cooperation combined with local self-sufficiency.

* Other cities outside of our region are quite frankly getting ahead of us. Thanks to a tri-county tax, St. Louis is putting $20 million per year into creating a unified “river ring” system of recreational greenways. Denver has an extensive recreational trails system, as does Chicago. Omaha’s trail users will soon have a beautiful, dedicated bicycle pedestrian river bridge as the crown of their trails system. In comparison, Kansas City’s efforts are small, isolated, and worst of all, disconnected.

* Cities and counties with trails already on the ground stand to benefit the most of all from a truly coordinated, region-wide trails plan. A 20-mile trail becomes many times more valuable when it is plugged into a regional trail network. It is more valuable yet when that network is plugged into the Katy Trail network to the east, the Kansas trails network to the west, and the Quad State Trail connection to the north.

Bicycle, walking, running, and trail groups — ordinary people who would benefit from a regional greenways system — all beg those few Kansas mayors who have voiced opposition to the MetroGreen plan to reconsider. So do the economic development folks who see the true tourist potential of a unified trails system and its economic value to the entire metropolitan area in return for a very modest investment.

Their cities (most of all) and the entire region would benefit from a regional, coordinated approach that would create a complete, connected greenway trails system.

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