Engineer Jim Terry has designed the plan, the county executive has presented it, and local city leaders have given a hearty endorsement.
Now it is up to our federal legislators to deliver the goods.
A $1.03 billion commuter rail plan – introduced by Terry, a principal with engineering firm TransSystems, presented by Jackson County Executive Mike Sanders and detailed in a four-part series last month in The Examiner – makes sense for Eastern Jackson County and the whole Kansas City area on a number of levels.
The plan would connect EJC starting in Oak Grove to downtown with stops in Grain Valley, Blue Springs, Independence and the Sports Complex on the way to Union Station. There is also a line coming in from Lee’s Summit, and riders could take a line to the airport as well.
The plan would take traffic off Interstate 70 and other major roads, easing congestion, and it would give residents a way to travel through the city while conserving energy and frustration. Someone could travel from Blue Springs to KCI for $3 in roughly the same time it takes to drive there, with no worries about parking.
The plan uses 80 percent existing tracks, so it’s recycling at its finest, and that helps lower the upfront cost to about one-tenth the cost of other Kansas City metro rail plans proposed in recent years.
It would serve as an economic catalyst from the Union Station hub to all the commuter stops in EJC, not to mention the injection of new money into the local economies on construction projects. The plan has little downside and would be a long overdue mass-transit strategy for a city the size of Kansas City.
The only question is the funding. Sanders is banking on money from the federal stimulus package, much of which has yet to be distributed.
That’s where our legislators such as Reps. Emanuel Cleaver, Sam Graves and Ike Skelton can make an impact, along with Sens. Kit Bond and Claire McCaskill. The Kansas City area hasn’t received all that much stimulus money so far, and other communities want that money, too.
It will be no easy task to secure the funds, but if any of our representatives can fight to get the rail plan funded, it would make a historic impact on our communities. Residents should give them plenty of encouragement.
Eastern Jackson County, MO —
