Light rail advocate Clay Chastain reports that his hopes for "a harmonious solution" to the city's light-rail dillema are largely dashed.

Chastain met via teleconference last week with representatives of the Kansas City Area Transportation Authority, the Mid-America Regional Council and TranSystems, which has helped Jackson County Executive Mike Sanders fashion a regional rail plan for the metro area.

"It was pretty grim," Chastain reports. "It didn't go well."

Chastain said he offered to work together on a new light-rail plan for Kansas City but continues to insist that a 35-mile "light-rail spine" must be part of the plan.

That spine, its critics will contend, is too expensive to attempt in a city where local funding for such a public transit plan will be diffidult to win.

MARC officials described the session as nothing more than "informational sharing."

Tom Gerend, MARC's assistant director of transportation, said, "We thought it wouldn't hurt to have an informal discussion over the phone regarding the work we're doing and provide him an ability to tell us a little bit about what he's attempting to advance.

Gerend said no agreements were reached.

Chastain claims Sanders' regional rail plan doesn't consider what people would need in the way of public transit once they arrive at Union Station. And it doesn't have that light-rail spine that he sees as necessary to tie the city from Lee's Summit to KCI.

Questions are being raised, Chastain acknowledged, about whether his key local funding mechanism, a 3/8-cent sales tax, would be enouch to cover the project's costs. But Chastain maintains that the metro area should win enough federal matching funds to make the project fly.

"It's not as outlandish as asking for 100-percent federal match," Chastain said, pointing obviouisly to Sanders' financing plan.

Chastain says he will remain open to public transit parties coming together to back a single plan.

But in the meantime he plans to return to KC over the holidays to continue collecting more signatures on two initiative petitions, one for the light-rail plan, and the other to prohibit the council from overturning voter-approved initiatives. Of course, the council did that after Chastain's rail proposal surprised just about everyone by passing in 2006.

 Chastain, a Kansas City native now living in Virginia, hints that even he has grown tired of the light-rail merry-go-round of recent years.

"I need closure," he said. "I need to get on with my life."

But don't expect Chastain to quit. "This is not about Clay Chastain," he said. "I'm trying to accomplish something to benefit the city."

Chastain noted that he was asked not to contact the media about the conversation. Of course, he told them he would do exactly that.

Watch for him at a grocery store near you. 

 

-- Michael Mansur and Brad Cooper