If at first you don't succeed,

badger the Parks Board and prepare another petition drive.

I'm back home in car-happy Kansas City, and sure enough, another expat who can't get his desire to improving the area out of his system is at it again, and he was dealt 1½ blows by the system today. (Story from KMBC) Longtime light rail activist Clay Chastain's last proposal in 2006, which was uncharacteristically approved by city voters, called for a light rail line drawn through two Northland suburbs, steep hills and even people's backyard, all without bothering to consult engineers and affected suburbs to determine the route's feasibility. The city council, able to do so, voted out the initiated route a year later. The Missouri Court of Appeals for the Western District upheld the decision today, and a challenge to the state supreme court is possible.

At the same time Chastain, appearing to learn from his mistakes from the comfort of his Virginia home, returned to KC today to present a scaled-down, 10-mile proposal similar to one that ten years ago then-mayor Emmanuel Cleaver II (now D-Missouri in Congress) called "tourist frou-frou". Chastain's plan, absent of the Penn Valley gondolas that have characterized previous proposals of his, also called for electric buses and streetcars to tie into the line running from the City Market to the Country Club Plaza. All at an estimated cost of $1.2 billion, which will easily by $2.4 million when inflation and typical KC bureaucratic bungling is all said and done. The Parks board granted him 10 minutes to present and offered no questions or took any action. (Sounds like this was done during public comment time.)

Chastain is now calling for another petition drive to enact this plan and amend the city charter to make voter initiatives binding to the city council. Should he proceed with this plan, he had better provide adequate engineering studies on the proposed route and essentially show that this is more than just a convenient line on a paper. Or in my case when I was in Junior High, tacks on a map on the bedroom wall connected by yarn. (My peers had pictures of N'Sync, Sammy Sosa and Mustangs on their walls; I had a map of the KC metro area. Geekiness factor x9 – Star Trek posters would have probably netted a mere x5.)