Tony: Clay Chastain Still Crusading For His Transit Plan

Even from Bedford, Virginia Clay Chastain is more committed to the cause of light rail in Kansas City than most people residing in this town.

For the most part the average Kansas City resident is content to blindly consume fossil fuels and commute their lives away rather than work to reduce U.S. dependence on foreign oil or all of the pollution that internal combustion engines emit.

What’s interesting to me is that Clay has now outlasted the careers of so many local politicos in his various quests to improve Kansas City. Currently, he’s in a knock down, drag out fight from afar to get his plan pushed through, his most recent letter sent far and wide and to Transportation Secretary Ray Lahood touts his plan over the designs of the far more politically connected Jackson County Executive Mike Sanders. As Obama transit money is now in play, Clay is taking on one of the area’s most seasoned, experienced and powerful politicos.

Here’s the Clay Communique:

Dear Secretary LaHood,

This correspondence is to make your department aware of what is taking place in Kansas City, Missouri in regards to several different groups’ attempts to upgrade the area’s deficient transit system and secure federal job stimulus funds and/or federal matching transit funds.

I am a degreed electrical engineer who has designed a transit initiative to go on the November 2010 KCMO ballot for which my supporters and I are currently gathering signatures. Attached to this email is a copy of that initiative and the transit plan it is promoting to the voters.

Concurrently an elected official of the area, Jackson County Executive Mike Sanders, has announced his intention to come to Washington soon with a retinue of supporters to lobby for federal funds for his heavy rail regional commuter transit plan.

Even though there are some aspects about his plan that are admirable, there are also some that are not, for instance:

1. Unlike our transit initiative, his plan does not seek a public debate, voter consensus, or a local tax behind it.

2. Unlike our transit initiative, his plan does not do anything to help upgrade the inner city’s poor transit system or economically help the city revive itself around a new modern and efficient light rail-based transit system.

3. Unlike our transit initiative, his plan puts the cart before the horse and seeks to improve transit in the outlying areas first rather than start in the part of the metro area that needs help the most…the central city.

It makes little sense to bring people from the suburbs to the central city on a new commuter rail system without an efficient and attractive new city transit system already in place to disperse the people about the city when they arrive.

We are concerned that Mr. Sanders and company might convince Washington to provide 100% funding for his—behind the scenes—commuter rail plan and then not be open to providing additional federal funding for the petition transit initiative in the event the voters of Kansas City, Missouri approve it in November 2010.

Our transit initiative is a complete, multimodal public transportation system that is designed to meet the President’s call for green infrastructure projects that will create thousands of new jobs (our plan proposes to use rail and electric bus vehicles that are all American-manufactured), help build America a stronger and more sustainable green economy, save energy, reduce pollution, reduce the nation’s transportation and fuel costs, and help revive and make more attractive our struggling urban areas.

Thank you for your consideration of this most important matter.

Clay Chastain

Like him or not, very few people have been consistently passionate about a single issue for this long. For the most part people just move to Johnson County.

Over the years I’ve become less critical of Chastain because I’m convinced that he really believes what he’s saying and that’s something that’s rare in local politics. It’s also good to remember that Chastain was the impetus behind the effort to restore Union Station so long ago, and eventually the effort was accomplished though not to the exact specifications of the Kansas City crusader. Now, the place currently sits mostly empty and consistently losing money. I’d probably use Clay-rail if it came down to it. His plan is far more friendly to dowtown residents and no one has the heart to tell Mike Sanders that massive journeys via light rail to Eastern Jack just aren’t in the cards. Nevertheless, as cool as light rail sounds I’m equally convinced that Kansas City can’t afford another money losing experiment.

Tony Botello