Kansas City's sidewalk problem
It's easy to see why Kansas City has a sidewalk problem when you read the following Kansas City Star article.
What if we built roads the same way?
The sidewalks you see throughout Kansas City were installed by developers as they built homes and shopping areas, said Dennis Gagnon, a spokesman for the Public Works Department.
Gagnon said the department has a sidewalk group that maintains and repairs existing sidewalks, but, in most instances, the cost is eventually covered by the property owner through special tax assessments.
“Since the area you have mentioned was developed without sidewalks, having sidewalks installed and paid for by the city is not a likely event,” Gagnon said.
The only city program that might pay for the sidewalks is the Public Improvements Advisory Committee.
posted by Brent Hugh @ 9:23 PM
2 Comments:
Local roads are built by the developer, but then the city takes over maintenance after development is complete and the city has approved the roads as "complete."
"Local roads are built by the developer"
Yes indeed. That's just the point.
Imagine that these local roads, created by developers, were the only roads that exist. Imagine that there were no way or mechanism to create any other roads or maintain the roads the developers had built.
Say a main road or highway is needed to connect two separate developments. "We don't have any money for that, because all roads have to be built by developers and we don't have any money to build any others."
Original road becoming dilapidated after 20 or 30 years? "We don't have any money to fix that."
The result would be no kind of transportation system at all. It would be completely disconnected. Certain neighborhoods might be OK in themselves (though others would be awful). But there would never be roads built connecting one neighborhood to the nexts. And the roads would always in a terrible state of disrepair.
That is exactly how our sidewalk system is right now.
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