The Localcycling news team has on occasion used a very fine system of cycling paths in the Kempen district of Belgium. This eye opening network shows how well designed trail systems can serve recreation and transportation usage. There has been a similar system in the works for the Kansas City metro area that now appears to be in jeopardy. Please read this informative letter from Brent Hugh:
I don’t know if we ever really discussed this important issue when it came up
about a week ago.
For several years MARC has proposed including funding for the MetroGreen system
(1100-mile regional recreational trails/greenway system) in the bi-state tax
district proposal that is currently being proposed to the KS & MO legislatures.
If you care about the MetroGreen trails system now would be a great time to speak up for it.
Because if nobody does, in just a couple of weeks it will be irretrievably gone.
I might suggest some letters to the editor:
And to the co-chairs (community leaders) of MARC Bike/Ped Advisory Committee:
Marge Vogt, Olathe, KS
mvogt@olatheks.org
Mark Trosen, Jackson County, MO
mtrosen@jacksongov.org
MetroGreen has tremendous popular support throughout the entire region. Regional
planning/coordination is clearly the best way to build such a trail system (as
opposed to our current disorganized and weak system, which is very clearly NOT
the way to do it . . . ).
Metrogreen was a very minor part of the overall plan (like 15%) and including
it with the SmartMoves transit proposal makes goods sense for a variety of
reasons.
Well it seems at the last moment a few key people (apparently on the Kansas
side) withdrew their support of the plan. "We already have our trails" is
apparently the thought process.
This is unfortunately self-destructive thinking, because (for example) a 50-mile
isolated trail instantly becomes 20 times more valuable when it is plugged into
a 1000 mile trail system (Metcalf’s law–the value of a network grows as the
square of the number of destinations it can reach).
Again, if MetroGreen is dropped from this funding proposal, basically on the
whim of a few opponents, that will be the end of the idea of a *unified*
regional greenways system.
Presumably each county will go its own way. But it won’t be unified and it
won’t connect the same way.
And it certainly won’t catch us up with St. Louis, which is spending $10 million
per year on a unified, well planned, "river ring" system.
Kansas City Star article on the subject: