Like TIF, the city’s new light-rail plan stiffs the neediest parts of the city

First developers. Now trains.

Most nonwhite residents of Kansas City, Missouri, live in the 3rd, 5th and 6th districts. These sections of the city do not flourish with activity. Sad fact: Developers tend to go where the white people are.

Kansas City threw gasoline on this inequality by stretching the definition of blight to include bungalows near the County Club Plaza and soybean fields off Barry Road. This allowed developers to get taxpayer assistance for shopping malls, law offices and boutique hotels. Sad fact: Tax-increment financing has been used most extensively in the council districts with the highest concentrations of white people.

Now, as a light-rail line emerges, history looks poised to repeat itself.

The City Council is hammering out a light-rail plan for voters to consider in November. It's been hell getting to this point. Past rail plans have failed to get on the ballot, lost at the polls and been rescinded.

What's come forth, after months of task-forcing, is a route from Vivion Road and Interstate 29 to Prospect Avenue and Emanuel Cleaver II Boulevard. At first glance, this seems like a decent choice. The route begins north of the river, shoots down Main Street to the Plaza and bends east, terminating in the 64130 zip code, which is 94 percent African-American.

But when you take it apart, the route begins to look a lot like those TIF projects.

For one, the route never touches the 3rd District, the city's most impoverished. The line visits the 5th District, No. 2 in terms of families living below the poverty line, for only about a mile and a half of its 11.7-mile length. The route doesn't go to the 6th District at all.

Council members who represent these areas are speaking out. Terry Riley, who lives in the 5th, has said that he cannot support the route. John Sharp, councilman for the 6th District, calls it "basically a tourist line."

"It's utterly lacking in social justice," Sharp tells me. "It doesn't go to the areas where people really have to rely on public transportation."

Sharp says that in addition to moving people, light rail presents opportunities for economic development. Skirting poor parts of town, he says, is "morally wrong."

Councilman Russ Johnson, who lives north of the river, has been promoting the "starter" line since it became clear that Mayor Mark Funkhouser was not going to pull together a regional transit proposal in time for the November election. Johnson knows the plan isn't perfect. "I only got so much money," he tells me. "I can't make it go everywhere." The proposed alignment, Johnson says, polls well and stands a good chance of receiving all-important federal matching funds.

While acknowledging its flaws, Johnson is unwilling to say the route is unfair. Third District residents, Johnson says, will live, on average, within closer range of a light-rail stop than folks in his district, the 2nd. The Vivion Road terminus, he adds, is a shorter distance from the 3rd District than his house in Platte County.

That last contention sounded like BS, but I mapped it, and Johnson's right. Still, the plan seems to suffer from a phenomenon I call the tyranny of the Northland.

Let me explain. I don't really think of people who live north of the river as tyrants. They can be difficult to govern, however.

To succeed, a city-sponsored light-rail plan has to cross the river. You can't ask Northlanders to pay for a transit system they'd need to drive over the Broadway Bridge to use.

Serving the Northland isn't easy, however. A river needs to be crossed and another municipality (North Kansas City) traversed. Once there, the route will attempt to draw riders from an area that grew up around freeways, not streetcars.

The latest estimates indicate that it will cost $69 million to cross the river and another $44 million to remake the I-29 interchange. That's one hell of a park-and-ride.

As Johnson points out, most Northlanders will live miles from the closest light-rail station. But wasn't that part of the social contract they signed when they bought their houses? Johnson lives on a curved street in the Park Hill School District. Robust transit options do not come in that package.

I'm not trying to pick on Johnson. He and the rest of the council have done more heavy lifting on light rail than their predecessors. This stuff is hard, they've found. Trying to overlay a good light-rail system on the goofy map of Kansas City is like trying to play chess underwater.

Funkhouser tried to create a new map by seeking a regional system that would use light rail, commuter rail, streetcars and buses to span 119 miles. The mayor was silly to think he could get a three-county tax ready for November. But he was right to want something bigger and better than the MAX bus on steel wheels.