KC Regional Transit Alliances urges 'no' vote Clay Chastain's "fantasy" light-rail plan | KCStar

Headlines are quick hits from media outlets from Missouri and around the world. Follow the headline link for the full story. The source of this headline says:

This fall, Kansas City voters are being asked again to pay for Clay Chastain’s fantasy light-rail plan. The cost to implement this plan will certainly exceed the revenue generated by the plan’s three new sales taxes. Worse still, this plan purposely robs $26 million per year from our underfunded bus system that thousands depend on daily.

Such is the folly of Clay Chastain. . . .

We have a regional transportation plan called Smart Moves that we’ve been investing in route by route, albeit slowly. Chastain continues to ignore the objectives of that adopted regional plan. . . .

Aside from ignoring the region’s top job-access gap, Chastain’s fantasy plan contains flaws that make implementation impossible.

His plan assumes construction costs of $45 million per mile, yet we know the streetcar cost $50 million per mile. Light rail is more costly than streetcar to construct — often approaching $100 million or more, not including river crossings.

To help fund construction, Chastain assumes $1 billion in federal dollars, which would be one of the largest single project awards ever. It is unlikely the city would get such an award for a light-rail line that runs through low-density areas to the north and south, a lesson we learned in 2008.

The local match would come entirely from sales tax revenues. A portion of those would be captured by redirecting a tax that supports our bus system.

Link: 

KC Regional Transit Alliances urges 'no' vote Clay Chastain's "fantasy" light-rail plan | KCStar

MoBikeFed comment: Clay Chastain has proposed a light rail plan for Kansas City every three or four years for the past 30 years. Chastain doesn't even live in the Kansas City area any more, and yet he is *still* proposing ill-conceived plan after plan, year after year.

Most, like this one, have been pure fantasy that run counter to engineering logic, accounting logic, and existing regional transit priorities. Only one of Chastain's plans has managed to receive a majority of votes--and it was so far from the budget and engineering reality that it, too, ultimately failed.

Reality is that the new Kansas City Streetcar is up and running. Streetcar supporters are planning a new transit district and approx. 4-mile expansion that will extend the Streetcar line to the Plaza and UMKC.

More information:

http://www.kansascity.com/news/local/article82638462.html

http://kcstreetcar.org/about-streetcar/