Sierra Club Criticizes MARC Transportation Plan

Media Advisory
Letter to MARC

Sierra Club Media Advisory - August 22, 2005

Public Meeting - August 23, 5:00-7:00 pm, 600 Broadway

Contacts:
Doris Sherrick, 816-779-6708
Ron McLinden, 816-931-0498

Sierra Club Criticizes MARC Transportation Plan

MARC's new long-range transportation plan is inadequate and adoption should be deferred until additional issues are addressed.

That's the essence of comments that the Sierra Club will make at a public meeting on August 23.

The plan is inadequate because it fails to address significant external factors -- including escalating energy prices, potential oil supply limitations, and global warming -- and because it doesn't lay out the potential advantages that could be realized if the region were to grow in a more resource-efficient manner.

In spite of concerns raised by the Sierra Club and other organizations 15 years ago -- text of the letter is available on the Sierra Club website, http://missouri.sierraclub.org/thb/newsletter/200508/marc.html -- the Kansas City region continues to spread outward in a dispersed pattern facilitated by MARC's "almost anything goes" regional transportation plans. MARC has failed to respond to the organizations' request in 1990 that it prepare at least two growth scenarios and evaluate the costs and benefits of each.

The Club will also criticize federal officials for allowing MARC to continue its inadequate planning process.

The Sierra Club statement will be presented at a public meeting on the plan at MARC's offices, 600 Broadway, at 5:00 pm on August 23. We anticipate that it will also be available Tuesday afternoon on the Club's local websites, http://missouri.sierraclub.org/thb/ and http://kansas.sierraclub.org

The August 23 public meeting will serve a dual purpose. First, the public will hear and comment on the new long-range transportation plan. Second, the public will be able to comment on MARC's fitness to continue to be recognized by USDOT as the region's transportation planning agency -- part of a triennial federal "recertification review" of MARC's planning program.

In addition to the evening public meeting, a representative of the Club will also be in attendance at the regular monthly meeting of MARC's Total Transportation Policy Committee at 9:30 am on August 23. That meeting will also take place at MARC's offices, 600 Broadway, Kansas City, Missouri.

Letter to MARC

To: Mid-America Regional Council Board and Staff
USDOT Federal Recertification Team

The Thomas Hart Benton and Kanza Groups of the Sierra Club, representing some 4,000 members in Eastern Kansas and Western Missouri, are concerned that MARC's revised transportation plan does not adequately address the challenges that lie ahead.

Fifteen years ago, in a letter dated May 29, 1990, the Sierra Club joined other organizations in expressing some of these concerns to MARC. In that letter we asked that MARC prepare at least two alternate growth scenarios and evaluate the costs and benefits of each. While some progress has been made in that direction, there still has been no meaningful discussion of how the region should grow. The progress that has been made has been canceled out by the continued outward expansion of the metro area that MARC's transportation plans have enabled.

MARC's transportation plans are based on forward projections of past trends -- a practice that carries increasing risks as major global factors change.

We believe any credible transportation plan needs to address or at least acknowledge the following factors:

• The almost certain decline in supply and increase in the price of motor fuels.
• A possible decrease in state and federal fuel tax revenues available for transportation purposes, resulting from consumer response to higher motor fuel prices.
• The likelihood of global warming, and of regulatory and other measures that will be adopted to reduce emission of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.

MARC's updated plan ignores these major factors, even though any one of them could severely jeopardize implementation of the plan. It is a consensus plan. Part of the unspoken consensus is that the plan will include nearly everything that any jurisdiction wants to do. Another part of the consensus is that the plan will stay blind to external factors.

A plan adopted by any region's Metropolitan Planning Organization represents a statement of what the future will be, at least from a transportation perspective. It creates and reinforces expectations which, in turn, influence decisions by local governments, institutions, corporations, and individuals. A plan that implies that 2030 will be much the same as today -- with more people and more jobs and more vehicle miles, all to be accommodated within a lower-density pattern -- encourages decision makers to disregard factors that they should otherwise consider. As a result, like the little amphibian in the pot of water that is slowly heated, we all get "frogged."

Furthermore, MARC's plan is inconsistent with some of its own initiatives. By supporting unrestrained outward expansion, this plan undermines Quality Places and First Suburbs initiatives. It undermines the Smart Moves initiative by projecting that regional destinations will be decentralized faster than transit can expand to reach them. And it runs counter to the Clean Air Action Plan in that it makes no attempt to encourage the more rational urban form recommended in that plan.

We conclude that MARC's plan is deficient, that the deficiencies are severe, and that they should not go unchallenged. Furthermore, we must conclude that federal officials are negligent for allowing this inadequate and contradictory planning process to have gone on for so long.

We therefore ask that MARC defer adoption of the current draft plan update and take the following steps:

• Add a chapter acknowledging global resource limitations and other external factors likely to affect the future economy, and thus future land development patterns, as well as transportation preferences and needs.
• Add a chapter outlining additional measures that COULD be taken now to reduce VMT (vehicle miles traveled) and the need to expand roadway capacity WITHOUT changing local land development policies.
• Commit to lead the region in a robust public discussion of alternate future patterns of growth, and outline some of the significant costs that could be avoided -- including transportation and other public and private utility infrastructure -- under a more rational and more deliberate growth scenario.
• Establish a clear timetable for such a regional dialogue on the costs of current regional development patterns, and the risks inherent to continued growth of the region in ways that are energy- and infrastructure-intensive.
• Suspend all roadway capacity projects and corridor studies for projects that lie outside the urbanized area as it was defined by the 2000 census, until the region has adopted a clear development strategy.

Only after taking these steps should MARC even consider adopting an amended form of the current draft update.

We are asking that MARC take these steps, with the support of state and federal agencies, to save future transportation dollars, and to move the Kansas City region toward greater energy- and resource-efficiency -- toward greater sustainability. Such a course of action is prudent and wise, as it will conserve resources and make the region more competitive in the global economy.

Respectfully,

Ron McLinden
Chair, Urban Issues Committee, Thomas Hart Benton Group, Sierra Club
ronmclinden@yahoo.com

Steve Baru
Chair, Transportation Committee, Kanza Group, Sierra Club
stevebaru@everestkc.net