A Good Day to Try the Bus

You couldn't ask for more beautiful weather for standing outside.

Just a quick shout-out to those who have the ambition to live a more eco-friendly lifestyle. Maybe you're like I once was. I always intended to become a bus rider, but only remembered it on ozone alert days. I dreaded the thought of learning to navigate by bus when the temperature was 90 degrees or more. How long would I be stuck in the heat if I missed the bus?

This week, particularly today, you couldn't ask for more beautiful weather for standing outside. (Ok, you could ask for a high of 76 instead of 86, but that's quibling.) Last week I posted links to help prospective bus riders find their way around the system. You can find a link to that post in the upper right hand corner of this blog ("Ozone Alert Days") right between the introduction and the Air Quality Skycast.

Areas in Need of a Pedestrian Overlay

A few months ago, the City Council passed the long-awaited overhaul of the city's zoning and development code. By allowing old-fashioned urban-style development, this overhaul was a step in the right direction for Kansas City. But it doesn't go far enough. Construction standards now depend on context. A street, like Main, that has been suburbanized over the last 60 years is likely to remain suburbanized. The good news is that streets that are still traditionally urban are more likely to remain that way.

One way under the new code to insure that an area retains its urban character is for the property owners to apply for a pedestrian overlay. Among other things, a pedestrian overlay designation reduces requirements for off-street parking, mandates buildings close to the street, and allows mixed-use development. If I were king for a day, I'd declare a pedestrian overlay for everything between the river and Brush Creek. Since that's not likely to happen, here's my list of areas I think need a pedestrian overlay. This is not intended to be an exhaustive list. Just food for thought.

• McGee between 16th and 18th
• The area around 18th and Wyandotte (near YJ Snack Bar)
  
• 31st Street between Main and Troost
• 31st and Woodland
  
• The area around 30th and Cherry
• Troost between 31st and Linwood
• 39th Street just East of State Line Road
• 39th and Main
• 39th and Woodland
• Most of Independence Avenue
• City Market ( I was disappointed to see that the new pedestrian designation for downtown did not include the City Market.)
• Broadway between Armour Boulevard and 39th Street
• Westport Road between Main and Southwest Trafficway

Here's a thought, though I doubt it would get very far at City Hall. Pass an ordinance to waive application fees on the first ten areas to apply for an overlay.

First Anniversary

With one year of blogging under my belt, it's time for me to write a new introduction. I've missed just about every intention I had for this blog. I now have the advantage of describing what this blog is rather than what I want it to be.

City Hall. Reports on our city leaders, in particular, items that you might have missed.

Commentary and Observation. I'm immensely interested in how cities work. Much of my commentary attempts to apply what I read to what I see as I move around the city. I'm particularly interested in new urbanism, alternative transportation, local businesses, and how these all relate to economic development.

School Matters. So far, I've only done a few of these. Yet this is probably the most important feature of this blog. Our schools are in deplorable condition because of citizen apathy, and we use the condition of our schools as an excuse for not working to improve the matter. Whenever I can, I try to write about the goings-on of our schools.

Seen Around Town. If you've read this blog at all, you know I get around by foot, and bus, and bike. So I see many things that drivers may miss buzzing around at forty-plus miles per hour. I take pictures of these things and I post them.

Anything else that suits me. Links to articles about city issues from other parts of the country. Local events I want to draw attention to. General Assembly news that affects our city. The occasional rumor (clearly marked as such and updated when confirmed or repudiated.)

This blog is called 12 & Main because that intersection represents where we are as a city, halfway between suburban and urban. To the North lie City Center Square and the Town Pavilion, examples of attempts to revitalize downtown by recreating the suburban shopping mall in an urban setting. To the South are the retail shops of the Power and Light District. You may not like the Cordish company (I'm not their biggest fan either). Regardless, the style of these buildings is based on the experience of the last twenty-five years showing the the best way to build urban is to build the way urban has been built since the dawn of civilization. Dense. Pedestrian. Mixed. Buildings to the sidewalk. Apartments upstairs; shops downstairs. The Romans built cities that way. Most of the world still builds cities that way. These characteristics are such a common fact of urban life everywhere I suspect they're based in human psychology, even if I can't say exactly how. The existence of the automobile can't change our basic psychology. For 60 years, we've fooled ourselves into thinking it could.

Ozone Alert Days

Summer is officially here. Along with the heat comes problems with ground-level ozone. The MARC Air Quality Sky Cast is showing an Orange Alert today (Tuesday, June 23). That means just breathing in Kansas City is a health risk for anyone with respiratory problems. Here's a few informational links to help you get through it. In particular, I've thrown in information for people who have never rode the buss before. For those of you who something more personal than a bus, there's also some carpool information.

Use this information for days when the Air Quality Sky Cast (right column) shows orange or red.

• Metro Offers 50¢ Ozone Alert! Fare (KCATA press release)
• Information for new riders (KCATA)
  
• Park and Ride Locations (KCATA)
  
• What to do on Ozone Alert Days (MARC)
• RideShare Program (MARC)

Finally, here's a link to the KCATA trip planner. A little advice about using it. First, I get different results if I enter my address than when I enter the intersection at the end of the block. Try various starting points to find one that seems the most reasonable. Another option is to look at the system maps and see what routes are near you and use a location on one of those routes as the starting point. Finally, nothing beats experience. After a while, you learn the routes that are most useful to you and where they go. You get by just consulting a route schedule.

Community Yard Sale

For many years now there has been a "Community Yard Sale" every Sunday at the City Market from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m.. Where you aware of this? I wasn't until I ran into an old girlfriend working one of the booths one Sunday last summer. Over the next few months I noticed that the sale looked more than a little pathetic. Some Sundays there were as few as one vendor.

Lately this event has picked up. A lot. Almost every Sunday the Northeast corner of the market square is filled or nearly filled. There are vendors on Saturdays now too. If not for a chance encounter my friend had with the owner of Vintiques, an antique store on the Northeast corner of the market, I might have assumed the recent verve of the yard sale was because of the sour economy.

A friend of mine made a different assumption. He asked Sheila, one of the owners of Vintiques, if they were the sponsors of the sale outside. Sheila replied that they were not. In a way, she's being modest. Last year shortly after moving from their old location near the new IRS campus, the owners of Vintiques started getting inquiries as to whether they offered booth space for rent. They don't. Instead of turning people away, they directed inquiries to the City. That's when the yard sale started to take off.

The simple act of referring inquiries to the managers of the City Market have brought more customers to the market on Sunday. While they're here, they're also browsing the produce vendors. Maybe they're buying coffee an the River Market Coffee House, breakfast at Succotash, wine at The Wine Cellar. In other words, they are generating economic activity with no additional expense to the city. No new infrastructure. No revenue bonds.

The Community Yard Sale happens every Sunday from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the Northeast corner of the market square.

School Matters: June 10, 2009

Someone once said that eternal vigilance is the price of liberty. This oft-quoted phrase is generally taken as a warning against Adolf Hitler types. It has a more mundane application that is just as important. That is the need to keep tabs on the people we elect. As much as we would like to, we can't turn our backs between elections and expect that those we elect will behave in our best interests. This is as true of the local school board as it is of the United States Senate.

I ask for your indulgence. I haven't been examining school board minutes for as long as I have City Council minutes. I'm not as good a grokking what is going on.

• The school district renewed its contract with YouthFriends for the screening and placing of school volunteers. Incidentally, YouthFriends also does the screen for Airick West's BE1 campaign.
• The district has been paying Nelson Creative Works for videotaping certain committee meetings, and transferring the footage to DVD. What's odd about this is that the district appears to be paying separately for each meeting taped. It's even more odd that the district is paying for a meeting tapes in November. Attached to the invoice is a list of previous invoices and the amounts charged.
• The fiscal year 2010 budget was passed. Unfortunately, they don't have a link to the budget on their web site. I'm hoping the Star or somebody will do a story on the budget in the near future.

Urban Farms & Gardens Tour

I've been hearing the phrase "urban farms" quite a bit the last few years. In particular, the last month I've been hearing about something called the Urban Farms & Gardens Tour, happening on the last Sunday this month. I pictured something very grassroots until I found their brochure at my coffee shop this morning. It was a full color, professionally produced brochure that showed a whole page of corporate sponsors.

I'm glad to see corporate types get behind this. Not only does this shrink our city's carbon footprint, it also improves our diet. Small producers are more likely to grown varieties that are bred for taste rather than how well they hold up in shipping. They may not be chocolate cake, but they'll do a better job of competing with junk food than the produce you find at a typical grocery.

Maybe some of this stuff isn't up to par. When the consumer can talk directly to the producer, the producer will eventually get it right.