Transit Honcho Mayo Pete Paid Kansas City Westside ONE MILLION BUCKS!!!

Credit where it's due . . . 

This cash might make my evening jaunts in a desperate search for decent coffee just a bit nicer. Sadly, TKC likely won't see a dime of this cash given that these studies are typically awarded to hipsters who are much better at paperwork than your 2nd favorite blogger. 

Fun fact on this topic . . . Rambunctious Kansas City Westside residents clandestinely tore out bike lanes on West Pennway and didn't wait for protest or a public meeting to do it. So I'm guessing this cash might bring us similar transit folly.

Either way . . . 

Here's a peek at a payday for one of my hipster neighbors pretending to understand urban planning . . .

$1 million in funding to be used to study how to reconnect Kansas City’s Westside neighborhood with the rest of the city’s commercial and residential centers.

The Westside community was home to immigrants from Mexico, Central, and Latin America who created a rich and diverse neighborhood that was a mix of housing, restaurants, and businesses, according to the transportation department. That community is now separated by I-35, which was built in the late 1960s, and other rail systems.

The City of Kansas City, Missouri, will develop a comprehensive plan to increase mobility and connectivity, repair the community, and redress inequities and barriers to opportunity throughout the Westside of Kansas City, the department said.

“Transportation should connect, not divide, people and communities,” said Pete Buttigieg, U.S. secretary of transportation, who was in Kansas City Monday for the opening of region’s new airport terminal. “We are proud to announce the first grantees of our Reconnecting Communities Program, which will unite neighborhoods, ensure the future is better than the past, and provide Americans with better access to jobs, health care, groceries and other essentials.”

Read more via www.TonysKansasCity.com link . . .

KC's Westside neighborhood awarded $1M from feds to reconnect community split by I-35

A newly announced $1 million grant is expected to help reestablish a Kansas City neighborhood that was cut off from itself and opportunity thanks to past transportation infrastructure decisions - part of a $1 billion plan to right what many call a decades-long wrong largely perpetrated against historic communities of color.