Thanks to the mayor for mentioning KCResearch on his blog. It is great to know that the site is being used by people at the city and they appreciate the work that we do here at the Library.

Indeed, various City departments have been very cooperative and forthcoming as we built the database over the last year. Currently we host documents from the Finance, Auditor's, Health and City Planning Departments. Not to mention all the City-sponsored projects that were authored by others. City Planning is probably the most active department in terms of producing research. The willingness of these departments to make their research available, and then to share it with KCResearch is laudable. Yes, much of this is public information and should be made accessible anyway, but they could certainly make it a lot more difficult for us.

It would be great to work more closely with people at the city in building KCResearch. For instance, there is undoubtedly a ton of older research that has never been put online that would be excellent additions to the collection.

With the bridge catastrophe in Minnesota heating up discussions about the state of crossings in KC and elsewhere, I thought I would take a peak to see what KCResearch has that might shed light on the issue.

First, there is the Greater KC Chamber of Commerce's analysis of KC deferred maintenance problem. Namely, they identify a whole series of projects that need funding, but are competing for resources and more often than not left for future years. The report states that bridges receive less than half the funding that they need. Check out the table on page 11.

Also there is a 2005 analysis of the steel strut failure of the Paseo bridge.

Another report from MoDot summarizes the girder repair on a Jackson county bridge, on route 24 in Independence.

We have a few more documents as well. Just search for the subject "Bridges"

The City of KCMO is currently accepting applications for a Task Force on Light Rail. They will be appointing up to 30 people to the group "representing a broad spectrum of interests and backgrounds." If you are interested fill out the application (PDF) and send to:

KCATA - Light Rail Citizen's Task Force
1200 W. 18th St.
Kansas City, MO 64102
E-mail: cbaker@kcata.org
Fax: (816) 346-0263

The Kansas City Star published an article a couple of weeks ago about a new survey that tracks the physical state of Kansas City housing in 11 key urban core neighborhoods. Basically what they discovered is that housing conditions have deteriorated in nearly every category since the survey was last administered in 2000. We have recently obtained the report and it is now available in KCResearch.

The survey was sponsored by the City and conducted by the Center for Economic Information (CEI) at UMKC.  CEI is great at compiling data-driven maps, and this report is no exception, with hi resolution maps that provide color-coded results down to the individual lot level. Check it out!

A recent story about an Independence woman and allegations of racial profiling have once again brought questions to the fore about equitable police treatment in traffic stops. I've posted about this before, but I thought I would mention the racial profiling statistics that are compiled yearly by the Missouri Attorney General's Office. They indicate the race of persons pulled over, the search and arrest rates, as well as the "disparity index"--an indication of overrepresentation based on a racial group's percentage of the population.

These reports are submitted by every police department in the State. We have captured and cataloged every one from the 18 county KC region.

Read the Independence reports from the last three years.

I wouldn't presume to analize the data, much less offer an opinion in a forum such as this, but it is great to have some hard numbers when making judgments and writing about these kinds of cases.

A group called KC Consensus is working on a great project geared toward getting local citizens involved in thinking about transportation issues in the KC metro area. Here is the message I received about it:

"Transportation is an issue that is often driven by experts. While engineers, elected officials and others have an important role to play, what is sometimes lost is the voice of the regular citizen, whose life and finances are affected by whatever transportation choices are available. "

"We need your help in collecting those voices, and here’s why: Consensus and its KC Forums project are preparing for an exciting event this fall called By the People. During the day of deliberation, more than 100 randomly selected citizens will consider different ways to approach the issue of transportation. How can we work together as a region to assure we can get around? How important is mass transit? What should be the role of the automobile? Who should pay?"

"If you will click on the link below and answer the quick, 8-question survey by July 27, 2007, you will help us understand how folks around the metro area think about transportation. We’ll use your answers when we develop the By the People discussion guide. Please feel free to forward this to anyone and everyone you think might be interested."

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=_2fWFn06jNW_2fP95X_2bOzr1_2b0w_3d_3d

"Consensus and KCPT Public Television are local co-conveners for By the People, which is a 10-city, national effort led by MacNeil/Lehrer Productions. In November, KCPT will broadcast a prime-time special on the local event, with a national PBS broadcast to follow in January. "

"If you have question about By the People, please feel free to contact Jennifer Wilding at Consensus, 816.531.4507 or jenwilding@consensuskc.org."

There you have it. This initiative will only be as successful as the amount of particiapnts involved. It seems like a great way to encourage local citizen participation, and also to harness the brain power and common sense of regular folk.

The city has just announced the appointment of a bicycle and pedestrian transportation coordinator. Her name is Deb Ridgway, and she has most recently been involved with Bridging the Gap, the folks who you may see volunteering at the neighborhood recycling centers.

With that in mind, I thought I would throw out some good Bicycle/transportation related links. MARC is a real leader in this area and they have some neat maps on their site with the locations of bike paths, repair shops and some other things. They also initiated a 2005 survey related to biking and walking which is available on their site and in the KCResearch database.

The city also has a program called Bike KC, which is basically a plan to incorporate bike lanes and routes into the city's existing transit infrastructure. It has been ongoing for at least 4 years, and I'm not sure what the state of the program is. Bike KC seems to have been responsible for the bike carriers on KCATA buses.

There are a couple local blogs related to bicycling as well:

KCBike.info

KC Bike Commuting

I'm sure there are more blogs that have eluded me, since there seems to be a fairly cohesive biking community in and around KC.