Wasting easy opportunities to encourage alternatives to driving won’t help the City’s efforts to improve it Bicycle Friendly Community designation or acheive the new Walk Friendly Community award. Small oversights like this show that the City still needs to do more to incorporate bicycling, walking, and transit into the culture of City Hall.

News from City Hall
City Communications Office
City of Kansas City, Mo.
www.kcmo.org
CONTACT: City Communications Office, 816-513-1349
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: May 27, 2011

Heavier than usual traffic expected Tuesday

The City of Kansas City, Mo., is alerting motorists who commute to the Central Business District to expect heavier than usual traffic on Tuesday, May 31. The “Get Motivated” event scheduled for the Sprint Center will bring an additional 17,000 people into the Central Business District on Tuesday. To facilitate this number of people, Grand Boulevard, in the vicinity of the Sprint Center, will close from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. for vehicular traffic.

Monthly parkers in City garages will not be affected. However, daily parkers near the Sprint Center and City Hall will experience a greater demand at parking facilities and are advised to arrive early and carpool, if possible.

The City recommends attendees of the “Get Motivated” event to utilize parking at Kemper Arena, 1800 Genessee Street. A shuttle service provided by Get Motivated will operate between Kemper Arena parking lots and the Sprint Center.

Kemper parking lots A, B and D will be available and can be accessed from Genessee Street off of I-670 or Kansas Avenue to American Royal Drive. 23rd Street is also open with access to Kemper Arena. Directional signage and parking staff will direct cars to appropriate lots.

The parking shuttles will drop off and pick up on Oak Street outside Sprint Center.

Media inquiries about traffic congestion and municipal parking should be directed to Dennis Gagnon, public information officer, 816-513-2659.

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Thanks to reader reports we’ve added over 30 new bike racks to our bike parking map, including Zona Rosa, Vivion/North Oak, and some great underground bike racks on the Plaza. The map now features over 800 bike parking spaces at more than 200 locations across the metro area.

Check it out at kcbike.info/maps/parking. It even works on your iPhone, Android, or Blackberry 6 smart phone!

Merriam Lane bike lanes
The Unified Government of KCK/WyCo will reconstruct Merriam Lane in part of the city’s Green Corridor, including bike lanes.  The segment between 10th and 24th Streets was just funded. Eventually KCK will put bike lines on their entire stretch of Merriam Lane and Southwest Boulevard, one of the prime bike commute routes connecting KCK, Downtown KCMO, and Johnson County.

Blue River Trail
KCMO also received funding for a segment of the Blue River Trail between Swope Park and Brush Creek.  Other projects underway will connect the Blue River Trail with the Brush Creek, Trolley Track, and Indian Creek Trails.

The Star: UMKC plans $45 million in improvements.

All Sprint campus garages have bike racks. Photo by Keith Gates.

Congrats to Sprint for being recognized by Bloomberg as a bike-friendly business, along with the likes of Kimberly-Clark and Texas Instruments.

At Sprint’s base in Overland Park, Kansas, employees who cycle more than 10 days a month get a 15 percent discount on fees to use the company’s fitness center. Sprint, the third- largest U.S. wireless carrier, started its “Smart Commute Program” in April 2009. Six dedicated bike lockers and various bike racks have been built on site, while about 20 communal bicycles are available for employees to get around the campus, according to Crystal Davis, a spokeswoman for the company.

Bloomberg: Bikers Get Backing of Kimberly-Clark, Sprint as 800,000 Hit Road

Do you bike commute to Sprint?  If you haven’t been laid off yet, tell us about it in the comments.

Photo by Kansas Cyclist

Kansas Cyclist reports on brand new bike lanes on 127th Street in Olathe, and the promise of more to come.  It’s a great addition to Olathe’s large and growing network of bike lanes and trails.

Click for Google map.

It looks like KCMO is finally on the verge of retrofitting some existing central city streets with bike routes, starting with Armour and Benton Boulevards.

The Parks Board recently approved a demonstration project to retrofit part of the boulevard system with a combination of bike lanes and sharrows. Armour will provide an east/west route across Midtown from Broadway to The Paseo, while Benton will traverse the length of the East Side from Independence Avenue to Brush Creek.

Construction will depend on weather and funding, perhaps this fall but likely next spring.  The City’s application for a federal grant just received a perfect score.  Local matching funds are currently being sought in the next City budget, and residents of the 3rd and 4th Districts can express support to their City Councilmembers.

If all goes and well and the a bit of paint on the street doesn’t hasten the end of the world, the Parks Department could begin looking for other opportunities to incorporate bicycles into the city’s famed boulevard system. These wide, well-connected routes are really quite well suited for cycling, and many have room to squeeze in some bike lanes.

35th Street Gap.
Unfortunately the current plan includes a gap between the two projects, where Armour Blvd crosses The Paseo and becomes 35th Street, which is not part of the boulevard system. Hopefully the City can find some extra funds to extend the bike route all the way to Benton and actually link these first two urban core bike routes.

See also:

• Application for CMAQ funds (Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality)
• Applications for local PIAC funds (Public Improvements Advisory Committee): 3rd District and 4th District.
• Ask your City Councilmember to include Armour/Benton bike lanes in the next city budget.

Are you taking the Car Free Challenge?  Sign up today at www.carfreekc.com to see how many car trips you can replace with bicycling, walking, or transit – and when some great prizes in the process.

Four years later we have jumped up to 39th place.  Slowly but surely the city’s efforts are starting to pay off.  Trails continue to be built, bike parking is increasing, traffic enforcement is getting attention, bike education classes have been introduced, Bike Week continues to grow, and even a few bike lanes are being included in new street projects.

Overall our rate of bicycle commuting is now 0.34% of all commuters, almost triple the rate of 0.12% in 2000.  The national rate is 0.55%, so we we still have a ways to go just to get up to average. Even more noteworthy is that bike commuting has increased 91% since gas prices fell from their peak in 2008.  Many of the people who tried bike commuting in when gas prices spiked have stuck with it.

Note: The League’s ranking puts us at #54 out of the 70 most populous cities.  For comparison with 2005, we looked at the 50 biggest cities, where we are #39.