You never really understand the value of mass transit until you move to the East Coast.In Kansas City, there are ads for the buses encouraging people to ride the bus. I know there are some who do ride the bus in Kansas City, but it's generally limited to the city for going from place to place. It's not widely uses by the public in general.
In east coast cities like Baltimore, Washington D.C, New York, etc., mass transit is a must. Even in Baltimore, mass transit is a life saver. While I do not use mass transit myself, the number of people who do is measured in seven figures. Buses are everywhere. Light rail lines run throughout the city. Even with the large number of people that use the mass transit system, the beltway that goes around the city is highly congested. I have friends that take over an hour to do a 25-30 mile commute.
I can only imagine what our neighbors in NYC are dealing with right now given the mass transit strike. If something like this were to occur in Baltimore, the streets would absolutely be packed and possibly even large gridlock. There's simply no way the road system would be able to handle all of those additional cars. I believe a strike is also illegal in Baltimore, but that obviously didn't affect the NYC mass transit employees.
Hopefully, KC will set up mass transit in the form of light rail in the near future. At a minimum, a line from the center of the city to the airport along with a spur to the Blue Springs area and a spur to the Johnson County/Overland Park area. Given the wonderful convention center in downtown along with the redevelopment and repopulation of downtown, a light rail would be wonderful. A spur to the convention center in Johnson County from downtown would provide a route from the airport to the Overland Park area, providing excellent transportation for commercial travelers. A spur to the Blue Springs area would provide an excellent commuter route that would take a lot of traffic stress off the I-70 commute from the Missouri side. It may be a dream at this point, but it's needed if Kansas City wants to continue city growth.
