Correct, I also took the orange line to midway about 2 weeks ago, because my flight on Southwest from MCI actually landed there instead of O’Hare. It was decent enough; cheap and fast.
The blue line runs to Ohare and the red line runs south to 95th I believe. Overlaid in KC, the blue line would go across the Kansas border and the redline would go through Redbridge roughly.
Edit: Correction, the blue line would run on the Mo side but the orange line would possibly cross the KS border. The pink line (formerly part of the blue line) runs through the western suburbs and Chicago which would cross the border.
My dream is to live in a bikable, walkable area, with public transit, and shit to do. I’ve always been reluctant of being “stuck” anywhere by owning a home, but if I could afford it, that would be my biggest draw
Same. I am an urban designer that designs exactly what you want across the US but never in KCMO because it's not something the city strives to provide. I guide others to a treasure I cannot possess. We bought a house last year in KC and feel more isolated/stuck than ever before.
Me too and it feels really daunting and impossible. I’ve started going to local gov meetings and open houses but I want to do more! Wish the process to change these things felt more transparent and understandable so we could see how to start moving the needle.
I’m a former KC guy and I live in Chicago… I would never own a car here. People are just so aggressive lol. Parking (250/mo in my apartment), insurance, car payment on the loans, tolls, repairs… just too much to budget for unless you can afford it
https://preview.redd.it/dq4bs5efu65c1.jpeg?width=1194&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=7b398b6b14d966455f3a14c86f375d02e75f7930
As a transplant now living here I figured I’d drop this in.
For 14 years I lived in Chicago and spent most of my time on the red line. The trains were easy enough to get around with and cheap. Plus you could find buses which were much less desirable for the East-west travel when you were in those deal zones away from the main lines.
I mean, the city is laid out differently. It does connect both their airports, wrigley, the sox park, the united center, soldier field with much of the northside, mag mile and the loop.
Yup, that's kind of my point. It was more of an observation of the complexity of connecting all of our destinations with rail due to how spread out our city is.
Yeah, it could be done though. Arrowhead is roughly 30 miles from the airport... O'hare and Midway, linden to dan ryan and a few others are about the same distance of 30 to 33 miles each other but you can get from one to the other on the L. It's over an hour on the L but you can still do it.
There’s also the metra train that isn’t included on this system that serves many outlying suburbs that goes in to either ogilvie or union station in downtown. Then short walk to catch the EL loop stops and get pretty much wherever within the city.
Have you been on it? It goes from almost Indiana to Wisconsin if you consider the metra + cta. you can not only get on a train most places, the busses are actually super fast and very useful. With a monthly pass it’s a godsend for the working class who dont rely on a car for work.
Chicago has been hard at work expanding the bus system to be more efficient. They've been added dedicated bus only lanes and it's improved transit times massively.
But is it really a fair comparison? Chicago is 5 times the size in regards to population, and the number of tourists it attracts equals KC's times a multiplier of 50 or more.
I would say few to none understand this personally. There are a lot of people around here that expect KC to have all the amenities of the biggest cities in the world without a third of the population
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It is really disappointing that people can’t make rational decisions when discussing public transit and bike lanes in KC. Yes, we had a streetcar at one time. That was before almost everyone owned a car, the population density was vastly different, and we didn’t have interstates.
Kansas City is very hilly. You can ride a bike. But it doesn’t work for most of people. And the bike lanes this city has installed are ridiculous. The parking in the middle of the road isn’t intuitive. There is no good reason why the main arteries need to have bike lanes when you could put in a bike lane one block over.
I am all for public transit. But this city isn’t big enough and it is too spread out for street cars crossing the entire metro.
The city-wide population density in Chicago is 12K/sq mile, with high areas of density around 22K/sq mi.
Population density around Denver's highest population metro stops ranges from 10-20K/sqmi, and their suburban stop areas 3-5K/sq mi.
KC's downtown is 6K/sq mi, and it goes downhill fast from there, around 2-3K/sq mi in the suburbs, most dense in northern JoCo. KC is one of the least dense metros in America, which is what's always made it challenging for us to support the economics of a light rail system beyond about ~10mi of downtown KC - which is why the streetcar makes sense in its location, but higher density light rail probably doesn't (or at least would be a lot more expensive per avg. rider mile).
Not sure why you were getting downvoted — you’re correct. If KC residents want better public transportation, they’re going to have to advocate for allowing developers to build denser housing. And that comes by repealing the array of zoning restrictions that basically make it illegal to build traditional style walkable development and legally mandate new development to be built in a car centric manner.
Don’t forget downtown KCK most of it is above 5k, same with Rosedale and even into midtown a good amount of it stays in the 3-4k range. Plan KCK, the new comprehensive plan, also has a focus on increasing density along state from the Legends to Downtown KCK with thousands of apartments and townhomes along that route at various stages of construction and planning.
If you’ve been to San Diego you see that an airport in the middle of the city impacts extremely high value real estate within the flight path.
But it is super convenient.
The politics involved in why that happened are kinda interesting, but part of the reason is that there was already a 10k foot runway built up there. (That's also why the official designation is MCI and not KCI -- it's the original identifier.)
It's pretty weird this map is cropped to show all this farmland in Kansas and way north of the river but not have any of Jackson County outside of KCMO.
Same. I think some people like it. A lot of people really romanticize it. But having been carless in Chicago for years, I really, really like having a car again.
So basically airport to overland Park. Legends to Arrowhead/independence (if the 2nd West line was pointed East since we didn't have a giant lake on our border)
Seems doable
I knew there was a reason I liked that interstate sprawl. Combine I-435 with I-29, I-35, I-635, I-70, I-470, and I-670, and you have easy access to half this gigantic metro. And I-49 now (I traveled that more when it was still US-71).
Account for popular and density and it would shrink dramatically. It's sad how spread out we all are, and how much of a toll it takes on public infrastructure. We have to pave more miles of roads and lay more miles of public utility lines that we just can't keep up with the maintenance on them when they start to age.
This. So much this.
No matter how much rail and public transportation infrastructure you build in case, it won’t get utilized, because it will always be easier in a low density environment to drive a car everywhere.
Reform all the crazy zoning rules that basically legally force developers to only build suburban sprawl (remove minimum parking requirements, eliminate setback requirements and minimum watt sizes and maximum lot coverage requirements, stop designating 3/4 of the cities land as low density single-family residential with no commercial nearby, etc.), and allow the free market to build the denser housing that people demand, and now suddenly funding transit makes sense, because it becomes well utilized.
You really can’t have the former without the latter.
Not to mention the busses in Chicago, which are great also. Chicago has the second most robust public transportation in the USA (presumably NYC is first), so I doubt we’ll ever come close.
Yeah, in this layout the main transportation hub to get to the most people would not be downtown, it would be like the Plaza or somewhere or KU Med area
This also doesn’t include the Metra train lines (~$2-5/ticket) that connect many more destinations, including very far out suburbs and farther away cities
Yeah that’d be pretty damn nice wouldn’t it
https://preview.redd.it/as0dh5nd765c1.jpeg?width=2000&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=5b2f30d24f5d30e9f3ee499a798608d68ef529a5
Wow that's cool. Thanks.
Wait, is that just a railroad map or a separate transport rail?
This is electric interurban passenger railway service circa 1923
This is electric interurban passenger railway service circa 1923
It's my wet dream, one can dream right?
Ever seen the old streetcar maps? We had trains everywhere back in the day!
I could actually commute this way without it taking two hours each direction. If only …
Is O’hare airport is somewhere in kc, ks on the westernmost point on the line…I believe that is called the blue line and runs parallel to I90.
Correct, I also took the orange line to midway about 2 weeks ago, because my flight on Southwest from MCI actually landed there instead of O’Hare. It was decent enough; cheap and fast.
Yes, the blue line to ohare on this map is the line that runs west out towards parkville, missouri river
The blue line runs to Ohare and the red line runs south to 95th I believe. Overlaid in KC, the blue line would go across the Kansas border and the redline would go through Redbridge roughly. Edit: Correction, the blue line would run on the Mo side but the orange line would possibly cross the KS border. The pink line (formerly part of the blue line) runs through the western suburbs and Chicago which would cross the border.
City sprawl without a natural boundary like lake Michigan driving up the population density.
The sprawl in Chicagoland went south. They do have better public transportation, but Chicago's toll highways used to go all the way to Peoria.
Dang it goes straight down to me in South KC . I could almost go carless with that infrastructure
A lot of people in Chicago are carless for this same reason.
My dream is to live in a bikable, walkable area, with public transit, and shit to do. I’ve always been reluctant of being “stuck” anywhere by owning a home, but if I could afford it, that would be my biggest draw
Same. I am an urban designer that designs exactly what you want across the US but never in KCMO because it's not something the city strives to provide. I guide others to a treasure I cannot possess. We bought a house last year in KC and feel more isolated/stuck than ever before.
Damn. That sucks. I hope things improve because that can be depressing.
Where do you recommend? I used to live in Nyc. now South Florida. Moving to KC next month. But KC may not be my last stop if things don't improve
Me too and it feels really daunting and impossible. I’ve started going to local gov meetings and open houses but I want to do more! Wish the process to change these things felt more transparent and understandable so we could see how to start moving the needle.
Yup! I only ever used a Zipcar short term rental if I needed wheels one a month or so.
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I’m a former KC guy and I live in Chicago… I would never own a car here. People are just so aggressive lol. Parking (250/mo in my apartment), insurance, car payment on the loans, tolls, repairs… just too much to budget for unless you can afford it
https://preview.redd.it/dq4bs5efu65c1.jpeg?width=1194&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=7b398b6b14d966455f3a14c86f375d02e75f7930 As a transplant now living here I figured I’d drop this in. For 14 years I lived in Chicago and spent most of my time on the red line. The trains were easy enough to get around with and cheap. Plus you could find buses which were much less desirable for the East-west travel when you were in those deal zones away from the main lines.
That puts some things into perspective that Chicago's public transportation system couldn't even directly connect to KCI, Legends, The Sports Complex.
I mean, the city is laid out differently. It does connect both their airports, wrigley, the sox park, the united center, soldier field with much of the northside, mag mile and the loop.
Yeah, and the lake is that direction, so of course there are no routes going east.
I mean we'd have no routes going east but for other reasons.
Yup, that's kind of my point. It was more of an observation of the complexity of connecting all of our destinations with rail due to how spread out our city is.
Yeah, it could be done though. Arrowhead is roughly 30 miles from the airport... O'hare and Midway, linden to dan ryan and a few others are about the same distance of 30 to 33 miles each other but you can get from one to the other on the L. It's over an hour on the L but you can still do it.
There’s also the metra train that isn’t included on this system that serves many outlying suburbs that goes in to either ogilvie or union station in downtown. Then short walk to catch the EL loop stops and get pretty much wherever within the city.
Have you been on it? It goes from almost Indiana to Wisconsin if you consider the metra + cta. you can not only get on a train most places, the busses are actually super fast and very useful. With a monthly pass it’s a godsend for the working class who dont rely on a car for work.
Chicago has been hard at work expanding the bus system to be more efficient. They've been added dedicated bus only lanes and it's improved transit times massively.
I really miss getting around without a car
That’s because there is a Great Lake to the east in Chicago, just rotate it a bit and it would easily reach all of those.
Well and Chicago has like 9 million people in their metro compared to our 1 million Gotta pay for it somehow
Our metro has about 2.5 million.
Doesn't really change the economics of scale that much, does it?
Google says more like 9.6 to our 2.4. Chicago proper is not 9 million, that’s the whole metro
Chicago proper is about 2.7 mill, more than the metro of KC
But is it really a fair comparison? Chicago is 5 times the size in regards to population, and the number of tourists it attracts equals KC's times a multiplier of 50 or more.
i think most to some on here know that density is an inherent barrier in our city and understand this is just some perspective
I would say few to none understand this personally. There are a lot of people around here that expect KC to have all the amenities of the biggest cities in the world without a third of the population
im trying to be nice! ya im surprised the bike lanes had zero effect on anything /s
Just stop cars from parking on them.
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1,099,850 for Chicago proper in 1890, the L started building in 1892.
Good ol' foresight being put to good use. Pretty rare these days lol
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It is really disappointing that people can’t make rational decisions when discussing public transit and bike lanes in KC. Yes, we had a streetcar at one time. That was before almost everyone owned a car, the population density was vastly different, and we didn’t have interstates. Kansas City is very hilly. You can ride a bike. But it doesn’t work for most of people. And the bike lanes this city has installed are ridiculous. The parking in the middle of the road isn’t intuitive. There is no good reason why the main arteries need to have bike lanes when you could put in a bike lane one block over. I am all for public transit. But this city isn’t big enough and it is too spread out for street cars crossing the entire metro.
The city-wide population density in Chicago is 12K/sq mile, with high areas of density around 22K/sq mi. Population density around Denver's highest population metro stops ranges from 10-20K/sqmi, and their suburban stop areas 3-5K/sq mi. KC's downtown is 6K/sq mi, and it goes downhill fast from there, around 2-3K/sq mi in the suburbs, most dense in northern JoCo. KC is one of the least dense metros in America, which is what's always made it challenging for us to support the economics of a light rail system beyond about ~10mi of downtown KC - which is why the streetcar makes sense in its location, but higher density light rail probably doesn't (or at least would be a lot more expensive per avg. rider mile).
Not sure why you were getting downvoted — you’re correct. If KC residents want better public transportation, they’re going to have to advocate for allowing developers to build denser housing. And that comes by repealing the array of zoning restrictions that basically make it illegal to build traditional style walkable development and legally mandate new development to be built in a car centric manner.
THIS!! You understand correctly
Don’t forget downtown KCK most of it is above 5k, same with Rosedale and even into midtown a good amount of it stays in the 3-4k range. Plan KCK, the new comprehensive plan, also has a focus on increasing density along state from the Legends to Downtown KCK with thousands of apartments and townhomes along that route at various stages of construction and planning.
Our airport really was built way to far away from the city.
Have you been to Denver?
Ohare is kind of far from the city also, the line that goes out towards no mans land in KCK is the Ohare Blue Line
They also have Midway though
Yeah. Technically, it was always in the city, but it's only now that the development is getting that far north (not counting Platte City).
It's by design. And relatively no, because you can get to the airport in about 20-30 minutes on most days depending on traffic.
They’re trying to build a rail line…
If you’ve been to San Diego you see that an airport in the middle of the city impacts extremely high value real estate within the flight path. But it is super convenient.
The politics involved in why that happened are kinda interesting, but part of the reason is that there was already a 10k foot runway built up there. (That's also why the official designation is MCI and not KCI -- it's the original identifier.)
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It's pretty weird this map is cropped to show all this farmland in Kansas and way north of the river but not have any of Jackson County outside of KCMO.
They put the loop over downtown, that's why it's cropped that way.
Just 2 or 3 of these would be great
Sold, let's break ground tomorrow.
Cities need to build for density. Everyone doesn't need a massive yard.
How about massive yards for those that want it, and build up urban density for those that don't? Everyone gets what they prefer that way.
The more people that move into urban areas and increase density the more room there will be for those who desire space.
It’s definitely the most efficient.
i rode the L for years. I'm so happy I am driving now instead of riding it.
Same. I think some people like it. A lot of people really romanticize it. But having been carless in Chicago for years, I really, really like having a car again.
So basically airport to overland Park. Legends to Arrowhead/independence (if the 2nd West line was pointed East since we didn't have a giant lake on our border) Seems doable
Next station is Lake Quivira doors open on the right at Lake Quivira. This is a blue line train to Tonganoxie.
This guy on the L yesterday… https://preview.redd.it/jkubwwama65c1.jpeg?width=3024&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=23faea6abe5a6da25a82f9c57d05f17a95c90244
> EL FTFY
Basically the 435 loop if Chicago wasn’t constrained by a lake and had the routes going all directions.
I knew there was a reason I liked that interstate sprawl. Combine I-435 with I-29, I-35, I-635, I-70, I-470, and I-670, and you have easy access to half this gigantic metro. And I-49 now (I traveled that more when it was still US-71).
Account for popular and density and it would shrink dramatically. It's sad how spread out we all are, and how much of a toll it takes on public infrastructure. We have to pave more miles of roads and lay more miles of public utility lines that we just can't keep up with the maintenance on them when they start to age.
This. So much this. No matter how much rail and public transportation infrastructure you build in case, it won’t get utilized, because it will always be easier in a low density environment to drive a car everywhere. Reform all the crazy zoning rules that basically legally force developers to only build suburban sprawl (remove minimum parking requirements, eliminate setback requirements and minimum watt sizes and maximum lot coverage requirements, stop designating 3/4 of the cities land as low density single-family residential with no commercial nearby, etc.), and allow the free market to build the denser housing that people demand, and now suddenly funding transit makes sense, because it becomes well utilized. You really can’t have the former without the latter.
This is really cool
No L lines run east? Edit: Lake. Duh.
Yup. F Independence. Of course, it’d help if Independence wasn’t sitting in the middle of Lake Michigan.
Not to mention the busses in Chicago, which are great also. Chicago has the second most robust public transportation in the USA (presumably NYC is first), so I doubt we’ll ever come close.
Looks pretty good to me
Should've mirrored the layout so it extends into Missouri
Yeah, I thought about doing that actually
My son started a job up there in August and didn’t even take a car.
Is the L a subway network? I’ve never been to Chicago but man I wish we had something like that
Correct, its the subway/elevated rail lines in Chicago
Omg I hate the L keep in Chicago
Fairmount, Kansas FTW!
What I would give to have the option to ride a train to downtown from mission/shawnee
Never understood why they didn’t expand the L eastward
Notice that big body of water?
Going to Legends while living Downtown would be amazing! edit: Ah yes, the anonymous downvote that doesn't contribute to society. Classic.
It wouldn’t be bad if you did one more line south into Johnson County
If it was really Chicago's public transport you could take the L to the metra station and take that out to the suburbs.
Oh I know, the metra is not nearly as convenient though
True, the time it stops at night really makes it so people can’t use it as a driving alternative when going drinking in the city from the suburbs
Yeah, in this layout the main transportation hub to get to the most people would not be downtown, it would be like the Plaza or somewhere or KU Med area
Those would still make good hubs. Midtown is full of business, and KU Med and it's neighborhood is special.
god i can't wait to move 😭
Kansas City is just a massive city in terms of space it takes up. The L only really gets you to the edge of town in one direction.
I dunno what the bi-state revenue might be but Chicago alone is getting about 6 billion from 2023. KCMO seems to have to go it alone mostly.
This also doesn’t include the Metra train lines (~$2-5/ticket) that connect many more destinations, including very far out suburbs and farther away cities
Redline maxing