PRICEY KANSAS CITY TOY TRAIN STREETCAR HYPE KEEPS COMING!!!



The endless push for the toy train continues . . . More meetings abound and here's a nice write-up sewing circle of Kansas City streetcar support:

Streetcar development virtues touted

Again, it's a great overview of enthusiastic supporters. Sadly, it takes about 10 paragraphs to get down to a discussion of cost:

"The price tag of extending the line down Main and building branches on Linwood and Independence Avenues was estimated at $471 million.

Even if the city receives what it hopes is $250 million from the feds, that’s a lot of money to raise from a one-cent sales tax and property assessment from people living within one-third of a mile of the tracks."

Funny for the morning . . . A supporter of the toy train argues that if we don't get on board KC = Detroit.

More in a bit . . .

Comments

  1. The reason the cost is free is because the only way to pay for the streetcars is to tax. Their won't be enough ridership and they know it.
    About 13,000 ride the buses we have now. Only a small amount to change over to the streetcars.

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  2. If he means like Detroit like in going broke he's right.
    If the cost is $471,000,000 and only 13,0000 people us bus service now it will work out to $36,230 per person plus on going expenses.

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  3. Just think of the water and sewer lines we could fix with $471 million dollars,might even get in a few street repairs.This would put a lot of people to work for a long time.

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  4. 6:13; they want us to pass an additional $500M in water bonds today so that they can make those sewer and street repairs... along the streetcar line.

    10 years ago, we passed $500M in water bonds. Brookside just recently got new sewers, but did your neighborhood? I know that ten years ago, my bi-monthly water bill was HALF of what my monthly bill is now, and it's only been within the past two or three years that the water has started tasting funny.

    I'm really not sure what City Hall is doing with our money, but I can promise you that they're not being forthcoming with it.

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  5. Billion dollar Toy Train ? Lay the bet off...

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  6. When are homeowners going to get those "special" tax cut deals and rock bottom property tax rates like developers and the downtown dwellers.

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  7. "The streetcar made my water taste funny"

    Classic Bryan stadler...

    Tell us again about the "disenfranchisement" or the yor newfound expertise and interest in out bus system or how you and Patrick Touhey speak for brookside or how streetcars kill children playing.

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  8. 8:15 your ignorance is underwhelming.

    You can give up your dream about a street car extension. It isn't happening! According to the Feds, the money is ALREADY allocated and evidently Sly isn't the buddy he thought he was, to get preferential treatment. The funds are gone!! YEAH! GONE. So the City can spend all the money they can dig up on environmental studies, ridership dreams. The Feds will not be giving Kansas City federal funds for this extension. You heard it first here! So, supporters, go home and take your ignorance with you.

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  9. I wish I could be afforded the opportunity to vote against the street car.

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  10. 8:15: For a Mensan you certainly are able to take great leaps of logic in a single bound. Bryan did not say anything about the streetcars making his water taste funny, and you need to learn to spell.

    Say hi to your band of merry hipsters for me.

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  11. 8;29 wins the daily award for weakest opposition argument yet.

    Don't vote for it because after all the show me lies are exposed and after the real citizens not the fakebook save our something's have their voices heard an anonymous phony power broker who's on the internet at 9 am is going to pretend he knows the fta budget.

    Classic from the deperation crew of 22.

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  12. 10:01 Clarification request/"deperation crew of 22"???

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  13. Maybe you could be specific about all the Show Me lies. So far I've not seen one of their positions refuted by facts.

    Perhaps Crosby Kemper is right and this is the fact-free city.

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  14. 8:29, My understanding is that the federal dollars were always in doubt because of the timing and the fact that other cities were better organized in their efforts and managed to get in line well ahead of KC to capture those funds. KC is somewhat late to the party. The question is whether they are too late. Perhaps one of the supporters can give us an honest answer on that. Otherwise, without federal dollars KC will be on the hook for a very expensive experiment.

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  15. So, someone thinks KC will look like Detroit if we don't have a toy train? If I'm not mistaken Detroit, the poster child for municipal bankruptcy and political corruption, has a toy train and it it is an ongoing burden to the city budget. Detroit looks like Detroit because they ran off their tax base (which is what KC is doing with the toy train)by exacting increasingly high levels of taxation without providing basic services like safe streets and decent schools. We may be headed to look like Detroit (and every other Democrat machine run town) but it won't be because streetcars or light rail are lacking. Who seriously thinks that efficient personal transportation options are going to become less desirable than piling in to some form of boxed mass transit where someone else always, it seems, has a cold?

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  16. Show-Me may be libertarians, but they are not stupid. Their figures make more sense to me than the figures coming out of Next-Rail.

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  17. That's how "confirmation bias" works.

    You believe whatever supports your predetermined ideas.

    Show me/Cato regurgitators are on an island of irrelevance in a sea f opposing data. They're like the climate deniers of this argument.

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  18. Hmm Smartkc may be on to something today.

    FBI agents posed as transit-oriented developers willing to bribe the mayor of Charlotte to get his support for a streetcar line, light rail, and related projects. The now-ex-mayor Patrick Cannon gladly accepted bribes in exchange for lying to investors and pushing city planning agencies to fast track the developments. When on the city council, Cannon had opposed construction of a streetcar line, but mysteriously changed his vote when he became mayor.

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  19. 12:34
    No money gets collected or spent for phase 2 without federal match.

    Next red herring....

    I lets do the KC isn't dense enough one, or the only 1,000 people rise the Memphis streetcar one.

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  20. Corruption in CK?

    Noooooooo

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  21. 2:16: That's the story du jour and is subject to revision when the feds say no.

    2:14: "Confirmation bias" is when someone hears only facts they agree with beforehand. The problem I have with the streetcar is I haven't heard anything put forth except "If we build it, development will come." It's like Crosby Kemper said, this is a fact-free city.

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  22. Hard to hear facts when you're not listening.

    Maybe take a break from shouting at speakers at neighborhood meetings and listen next time. Or read a little.

    All the data is there, is open, is compelling and well-presented, but when you spend your time on facebook and trolling blog comments and yowling and rending flesh and tearing out your hair with the perpetual indignation machine, it's on you.

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  23. Social Engineering on twitter isn't facts. Nor is it compelling and well presented.

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  24. I've been to a neighborhood homes association meeting in Waldo where no one shouted. The presenters only said how they were going to present the streetcar proposal. They didn't say why it was a good idea. The crowd was polite. One person asked what a TDD was (the term was used but not explained), and one of the presenters (a BNIM employee) got a little uneasy and started looking around. I didn't have an opinion one way or the other, but his reluctance to discuss what a TDD was caused my bullshit detector to go off. Hemingway was right. These things come in handy.

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  25. sounds like Waldo people are just more reasonable than the loud minority of Brookside busybody fake crusaders.

    They literally shouted, talked over, clucked their tongues, hissed, and shit-talked while presenters or proponents who had the floor spoke. It was shameful. I'm a 55 year old white guy and about as square as they come, and I was pretty dismayed to see supposedly concerned citizens conduct themselves that way and lower the discourse. The time the Mayor was there he was remarkably patient with their antics. Russ, not so much, but I actually felt sympathetic for him, and I dislike him and most Northlanders in general.

    With the exception of shouting, they did the same thing at the TDD hearing (which they did not seem to understand the purpose of).

    It was embarrassing to be a resident of a neighborhood that would produce such hags, nags and gasbags.

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  26. Man, a few people got angry at meetings because some salesmen weren't being forthcoming with all the details of their project? Well, it's good to know that those were just some cranky CAVEmen, and the majority of people in Waldo and Brookside can't wait to have a streetcar. Except let's draw them out of the TDD just to be sure.

    Oh, also, it's cute how Byron Stadler doesn't know the definition of "disenfranchisement," Now, shut up, 9:30! Just because you're a tax paying citizen of Kansas City doesn't mean you get to vote. We CLEARLY created a voting district that would give us our desired result.

    You guys are really a joke. I can really hear the fear and frustration build as the facts continue to come out.

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  27. If you want to beat the streetcar cabal you can't say please be nice to me, please let me win sometimes.

    You got to play to win.

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