Kansas City Residents Demand Safer Streets

Image via BikeWalkKC.

The northeast area of Kansas City is one of its most ethnically diverse and historic neighborhoods. Driving down the area’s main street, St. John Ave., you pass a wide variety of small-scale local businesses; there are tattoo parlors adjacent to brake and muffler shops, boutique clothing stores, and some of the best tacos in all of the United States. You will find land uses such as churches, schools, and single-family homes all on the same block. The area was built upon the surrounding industrial parks, south of the Missouri River. 

The Northeast isn’t the highest income or the most glamorous area, but it does have a lot of character and an undeniably strong community, and the neighborhood’s strength and perseverance have shown in their partnership with BikeWalkKC. 

BikeWalkKC is an organization that focuses on making the streets of Kansas City safe for users of all kinds. It is a radical bottom-up kind of organization that makes a change in the city by partnering with community members and organizations with similar goals. Their recent demonstration with the Indian Mound neighborhood in the Northeast gained attention from the Kansas City Public Works Department to address a problem people in cities across the U.S. have had to face: unsafe streets.

Community members, volunteers, and project partners gathering at Van Brunt and St. John to install traffic calming demonstrations. Image via BikeWalkKC.

In 2017, BikeWalkKC was awarded a grant to work with communities in Kansas City to make bottom-up change happen. Partnering with a local children’s hospital, they identified two locations for quick-build projects to see how people, both in vehicles and on foot, would respond. The groups painted temporary bump-outs and crosswalks at the intersection of Van Brunt & St. John as well as at 10th and Benton, another location in the Northeast. Traffic behavior was measured both before and after the implementation, and the results affirmed feelings among the community.  

As BikeWalkKC reports, “Rolling stops decreased by 10%, pedestrian use increased by 23%,” and the changes did not divert traffic; similar car counts were found before and after the experiment. In the end, “70% of survey respondents said they wanted permanent improvements.” In 2020, the people’s demands were met. The KC Public Works department was granted funds to make these implementations permanent, with even more traffic calming sites outlined along St. John Ave. Construction for these improvements is scheduled to begin later this year.

Image via BikeWalkKC.

This story in Kansas City has a happy ending, but it begs the question: why was this neighborhood- and local business-serving street so unsafe to cross? And why did the people and non-profits in this area have to take matters into their own hands to make a change?

The answers to these questions lie in our outdated traffic rules and policy. When a road is being designed, engineers use criteria established in the 1940s to decide on the most effective design. And the “effectiveness” was based on measuring how quickly you could get from point A to point B. Simply put, the rules outlining how to best design a road are not in sync with what is best for communities.

 An easy-to-identify enemy of making neighborhood streets safe for all users is the 85th percentile rule; this rule claims that the safe speed limit for a road is whatever 85% of users are driving at or below. Artificially raising or lowering speed limits could result in more crashes. Though this rule is not enforced by any federal agency, it is widely used to determine safe speed limits across the U.S. 

I wouldn’t argue for the complete nixing of this rule. Instead, I would argue that under sensible road design, the rule could be used more effectively. Neighborhood streets, like those in Kansas City, are designed to create a false sense of security, and it makes users feel as though they can drive faster than what is safe. The 85th percentile rule has many disadvantages. It has been pointed to as the cause of gradually increasing operating speeds, and though it may work well for highways and roads, it is ineffective when implemented in residential areas. The rule is useful for something, though: it proves that our neighborhood streets are largely being designed in a way that is not safe for all users. 

Image via Facebook.

The story of bottom-up action in Kansas City shows this. The solution was not to artificially lower speeds. Instead, it was to create design interventions that made sense in the context, so that everyone using St. John Ave. felt safer. It will take small actions like this to make lasting and impactful changes in our neighborhoods, but BikeWalkKC is not working alone in this fight. 

The National Organization of City Transit Officials (NACTO) came together last year to call on the Federal Highway Administration to update the Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices. This manual is important for making sure our street signage is uniform, but it can oftentimes stand in the way of people making creative changes to improve street accessibility and safety. NACTO outlined demands, such as listening to more voices and eliminating the 85th percentile rule. These efforts would go a long way in the fight for making streets accessible. It is clear in pockets around the United States that people want to take the streets back from the auto-dominated death traps they have become. 

The example I’ve shared from Kansas City could easily be replicated in different contexts and communities. It stands as a great case study of people taking charge of changing their environment.

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