Downtown streetcar in the works

[xenokc]

However the ongoing maintenance of BRT is much much lower than LRT. BRT allows for more lines to be installed at the same price point, potentially allows for more frequency and is less likely to drain funds for feeder buses.

LRT and BRT are not the same... both can potentially provide the same effective service (per line) but BRT is much much less to operate. Given that you can have more BRT lines for every LRT line, BRT is ultimately more effective.

It didn't take 5 years to do a line. The Troost and Main lines took about 5 years together. That's probably more of a funding issue than dragging feet. But yeah, KCMO has bureaucracy - big surprise.

[kcmo]

Right, I agree with you. But I also am going with whatever people decide on. I'm not making the decisions.

Have you not seen my plan for a regional BRT system for KC?

I'll sum it up like this.

BRT lines would go to all key suburban destinations and urban corridors around the metro.

Such as:

Lee's Summit
Blue Springs
Indep Ave
State Ave
North Oak Tfwy
KCI/Tiffany Springs
Liberty
Shawnee Mission Pkwy
Metcalf
Olathe
Grandview
etc

They would run to those places every half hour to hour during the day and more frequent during the rush hours.

They would all converge and enter a dedicated BRT facility at either the river market or plaza.

The buses would be modern, attractive and clean running. (they could possibly pick up overhead wires in the core and use diesel when they leave the core).

The facility would be dual lane and dedicated to BRT buses only. There would be LRT like platforms and stations and off-board ticketing.

The frequency in the primary BRT corridor from the Plaza to River market would be as frequent as the 16th Street Mall line in Denver. Every few minutes or even fractions of a minute.

If you are just trying to get around the core, you can catch any of the buses as they travel the corridor and you will have a bus almost instantly with zero thought process. If you are going to Blue Springs, KCI or Overland Park, you simply wait for the correct bus. If you are commuting in to a job, you can take one bus and have access to much of the urban corridor. Few suburban express buses do this today. Blue Springs buses don't go south of Crown Center for example.

But everybody would know that all buses quickly and efficiently cover the central urban corridor and you can easily get from a blue springs bus to an olathe bus in that corridor as well.

It would be easy to modify service for special event or run buses to the stadium from the corridor.

Then you tie other neighborhoods of the city to the BRT corridor with feeder buses and possible some modern streetcars like to westport, plaza, umkc, westside, east side etc and circulator buses or streetcars for the downtown area.

You can do all of this for less than a LRT starter line. This has always been my plan, but it has always fallen on deaf ears.

It does have problems. That many buses are expensive to maintain. Mainly cost of labor for drivers. Getting the KS side and the MO side to fund a single entity and create one seamless transit system seems nearly impossible. The JO and the kck BUS need to go away.

But it would provide the city with excellent and frequent transit in the urban core as well as the region.