EJC would benefit first from rail

Eastern Jackson County would be the first part of the metro area to significantly benefit if the Kansas City Regional Rapid Rail system is built.

This year is likely to be the pivotal year, as two crucial developments are expected. First, officials hope to get the OK by late spring for a key step in winning federal funding. Then, later in the year, Jackson County voters could be asked to approve local money.

Jackson County Executive Mike Sanders has been pushing the $1.1 billion rapid rail plan for almost two and a half years, getting many other elected officials on board, too. Independence Mayor Don Reimal has said it would relieve rush-hour congestion. Blue Springs Mayor Carson Ross said it would spur economic development.

Sanders has said he’s made presentations to at least 5,000 people, mostly business and civic leaders. “Virtually everyone we’ve presented this plan to has supported it,” he says. Advocates also say polling shows solid support for a sales tax to pay for the plan.

The plan calls for six rail spokes meeting at Union Station. They would use mostly existing tracks that are unused, like the old Rock Island line through Lee’s Summit, or only lightly used, like the two to four trains a day on the Kansas City Southern tracks through Independence, Blue Springs and Grain Valley. Other spokes would go to the airport, Kansas Speedway, Liberty and Grandview.

Sanders says it would lead to the metro area’s biggest transformation in a couple of generations.

“Think about the way this changes the way this city thinks, this city moves, this city operates in the years ahead,” he says, adding that “green” transit is crucial to attract what he calls “young intellectual capital” – the bright young people key to an area’s economic vitality.

It’s those first two lines, both through Eastern Jackson County, that are the focus of a consultant’s detailed planning at the moment. Officials are looking at specific routes and stops and whether commuter rail or other forms of transit such as buses would be used. As opposed to light rail, which would require building an entirely new network of tracks, commuter rail – also called rapid rail – would use the regular heavy-duty tracks that freight trains roll on. Using existing tracks would be far cheaper and faster than building a system from scratch, making the Sanders plan competitive for federal funding, local and federal officials have said.

Those detailed plans on the Independence/Blue Springs/Grain Valley and Lee’s Summit/Raytown lines could go to federal government for approval by late spring. With that in hand, the area would be eligible for federal funding (which Congress is haggling over at the moment). Washington is paying for the “alternatives analysis” for those two lines and a third one, the one to Grandview.

Even with those first two lines in place, officials acknowledge, the area would have the beginnings of a transit system that could get a commuter from, say, Independence to Lee’s Summit, or Blue Springs to Independence. Those two lines would meet somewhere on the east side of Kansas City – either at the stadiums or farther north – so a commuter wouldn’t have to go all the way downtown to switch trains.

What would the morning commute look like? Say a Grain Valley resident works for H&R Block in the Power & Light District. She would get on the train in downtown Grain Valley and roll west. The train would make likely two stops in Blue Springs, near U.S. 40 and Adams Dairy Park and then downtown. Rolling on to the north and west, the train would glide past the north edge of Lake Tapawingo and then under Interstate 70 just east of the Little Blue River.

It would probably make a stop near Centerpoint Medical Center (where Independence would like to have street cars taking people to places such as Children’s Mercy East, which opens later this year; Independence Center, Bass Pro Shops and the Independence Events Center.) There would be two more stops in Independence, one possibly near where the tracks cross under Noland Road a few blocks north of Truman High School. Officials are leaning toward the possibility that the line would then run to 23rd Street and along that major thoroughfare on into Kansas City. There would be other regular stops as the train goes on to Union Station, and from there our commuter jumps on a Kansas City streetcar – the city is working on those plans now – to get downtown.

The engineer who put the plan together, Jim Terry, a principal at TranSystems in Kansas City, has said a rider could get home to Lee’s Summit from a Chiefs game in less time than it would take to get a car out of the Arrowhead parking lot. He’s also said a person could go from Blue Springs to the airport – stops at all three terminals – for about $3.50.

Eventually, Independence officials would like to see the Pixley spur added to the system. That’s the Union Pacific line from the Truman Depot east to the underground warehouse space east of Missouri 291. The railroad runs about three short trains a week on that line. City officials have said using that line would take traffic off U.S. 24 and 23rd Street, which could become a pressing issue as the Little Blue Valley is developed in the years ahead.