There is an important interview in the Kansas City Star with one of the region’s leading archetects, Kevin Klinkenberg. It is a lengthy article but here is one of the important sections about inter-city rail service. Much of it has to do with streetcars, but there is also quite a bit about Amtrak and the station.
To me that would be a real disappointment, and I think it would be to the people of Kansas City. I think they want the station to be a train station. It’s our St. Louis Arch in a way, its the only thing we have that’s on the magnitude of the St. Louis Arch. Perhaps with more liberal transit funding that could contribute to it to…
Yeah, you certainly would hope that the station really does need an injection of life on a day-to-day basis. Science City has not really worked the way people thought it would work but that’s a very big and extensive endeavor to undertake. I think as a planner and designer we should always look to be outside of the box a little bit and try to think big where we need to and look at all ideas.
I think sometimes ideas we think really are crazy really work out. A lot of people thought it crazy to renovate Union Station in the first place and now people love it and love the fact that we renovated the building and how beautiful it is now. So I don’t think we should ever stop dreaming big and finding big solutions but what me may find, if I were inclined to think what might happen, we might have a short term solution that involves something now for the next 10 to 20 years that doesn’t involve the train station, and then transitions later on to actually using the station when the money and time is right, but that’s just a guess.
Filed under: Amtrak, Passenger Rail Transportatio Policy, Regional USA Passenger Rail
Your comments and opinions on the latest passenger rail happenings