When Kelli Wurfel, a 20-year old University of Kansas student, travels to Kansas City via K-10 highway she doesn’t have to worry about much.
Wurfel uses the route frequently throughout the year. She drives to Kansas City to visit her sister, to go shopping or to surprise friends at Johnson County Community College. Wurfel said traffic on the highway is minimal.
“Usually, it’s not that bad except during rush hour. I haven’t had too much trouble getting to wherever I’ve needed to go,” Wurfel said. “As more people begin to drive, I can see how it could become more crowded.”
Wurfel’s sentiments on the issue nearly mirror those of the Lawrence-Douglas County Metropolitan Planning Committee. A subdivision within the planning committee, the Transportation 2030 committee, has devoted itself to identifying and addressing the transportation problems that loom in Lawrence’s future.
The committee concerns itself particularly with Lawrence’s own streets quickly becoming too small to handle increased traffic congestion and how to fix it long-term. But it also pays close attention to the long-term traffic problems in commuting to Kansas City from Lawrence.
According to the Planning Committee, the Lawrence population will increase by 74 percent in the next 20 years. The growing community mingled with the continued expansion of Johnson County will cause more difficulties for drivers traveling between the two locations.
“There’s a trend in the past few years that there are more commuters coming out of Lawrence and even more people commuting in,” Transportation 2030 Committee Head Anson Gock said. “Johnson County has such a larger population and also jobs so they are going to generate a lot more traffic.”
According to Transportation 2030’s forecasted roadway congestion models, K-10 is going to generate enough traffic in the next 20 years to become a major problem. Currently, the highway meets none of the criteria to be considered the least bit congested. But by the year 2030, the end of each side of K-10 will be heavily congested and the middle will be nearing congestion.
To combat the issue, the transportation committee has presented several possible changes or alternatives at recent open meetings. Some citizens have responded surprisingly by suggesting a desire for a light rail system connecting Lawrence to Kansas City. When Transportation 2030 asked the question of what gives Lawrence residents the best opportunity to get more access to the area in stakeholder interviews, a light rail system climbed to the top of the list as the most popular response.
“I think it would be a really good idea because it would save gas, save money, make it more easier to take care of roads, make there be less wrecks,” Wurfel said. “Yea, it sounds pretty cool.”
Although committee members chose to share the thought of a light rail system with the public, they are worried about all the obstacles it would have to overcome. Davonna Morgan, Lawrence planning coordinator, said that choosing where to put tracks easily turns into a controversial issue and especially when two separate cities are involved.
Gock thinks there’s an even bigger problem than working together with another city. He said that in 2009, the Kansas Department of Transportation would lose $150 million after a federal funding cut. But still the commissioners aren’t ready to abandon the light-rail talk quite yet.
“I think in the future because traffic will increase, it’s a viable option and we’ll look at that with the next update,” Morgan said. “It’s kind of far away but we see this congestion coming and by the next update we’ll have something more we can look at.”
The committee’s goal is still to find a solution for the incoming problem that can be completed within the next 20 years. If it can leap past the hurdles and figure out the details for a light rail system, the committee will have to soon.
These systems take a long time to construct. The Niagara Frontier Transportation Authority built a light rail system in Buffalo, N.Y. in 1978 after deciding it was the best transit option. It wasn’t completed until 1985 and NFTA-Metro rail only covers seven miles of ground. Lawrence to Kansas City rails would account for substantially higher mileage.
The building time for the Buffalo rail system isn’t the only warning sign that it may not be the best alternative. According to the American Public Transportation Association, only 17,000 people per day ride the Buffalo Metro Rail. A successful light rail system, like ones in Portland and San Diego, average more than 100,000 per day. The nation’s top rail system by ridership resides in Boston, where 235,000 people use it to travel per day.
NFTA put in the rail system in Buffalo figuring that the population would continue to ascend upwards. But that didn’t happen and the rail system in Buffalo never quite reached the goal of a top transit choice for citizens. Over the past two years, ridership on the metro rail has declined at a rate of eight percent per year.
But Gock said there are ways to measure how successful a light rail system would be. He said Transportation 2030 and the Kansas Department of Transportation monitored current Lawrence to Kansas City transit methods to evaluate the demand.
“We’re not getting a rail system immediately but the Johnson County K-10 connector, we are running those buses to see people’s levels of interest,” Gock said. “To build a future rail system, we are kind of needing to use buses as a gauge.”
He is referring to a current bus that connects the University of Kansas to Johnson County Community College. Gock said that the connector has received positive feedback. Morgan said the success of the route could serve as a precursor to establishing a stronger relationship with Johnson County officials, which would enable bigger projects like a light rail system to take shape.
“It’s just like any type of business. You put out a product, you see how well it does and you produce more,” Morgan said. “It’s the same theory and with this doing so well, we hope to see more coordination between Johnson County.”
Not everyone is convinced that a light rail system is a practical endeavor to help fight traffic congestion in the future. Two years ago, the Kansas Department of Transportation released a study on K-10 that concluded widening the highway would be the best option. Gock and Morgan said it would have to start in Johnson County but had some promise to fulfill one of Transportation 2030’s goals.
The talk of a light rail system may have just begun and it will likely be years before more specific plans are laid out. But Gock said he expected the idea to mature as the population continued to rise.