Homeland Security was Asleep at the Switch in Kansas City

My biggest fear is bridges and tunnels. And water supply. But mostly bridges and tunnels. That is what makes the current transit situation in Kansas City so appalling.

Kansas City is a large metropolitan area, in two states. It is sliced in half north and south, by the Missouri River. The metropolitan core is served primarily by five bridges across the river: the I-635, the Broadway, the Heart of America, the Paseo (I-35), and the Chouteau . Between the farthest east and the farthest west expansions of the suburbs (Western Wyandotte County almost to Leavenworth, and eastern Independence) a total of nine bridges cross the river. Four are in the farthest reaches of the very edges of the metropolitan area that the term "urban sprawl" was coined to describe. This is at least thirty miles as-the-crow-flies. The streets follow the meandering river, so I don't know how many actual street-miles it entails. The KC Metro is home to over a million people and it seems like every one of them has at least one car on the road at all times. No one walks anywhere, and no one takes the bus. 100,00 cars cross the river every day.

Interstates 35 and 70 are major border-to-border and coast-to-coast traffic routes, and not just for drug runners. A lot of legal commerce moves through our burb daily, north-south on I-35, and east-west on I-70.

In February of 2003, the Paseo Bridge was closed for emergency repairs. We have known since then that the Paseo/I-35 bridge would close in 2005 for major repairs, and would be closed for several months. I-35 through-traffic is being routed several miles out of the way and onto the I-435 loop that encircles the city for over a hundred miles. This is causing traffic problems, especially in the Grandview Triangle, but traffic is not my concern for this post. My concern for this post is one of national security.

The Kansas Department of Transportation has stubbornly gone ahead and closed the I-635 bridge for scheduled repairs, reducing to three the number of primary bridges serving the 100,000 cars that cross the river every day.

My question is this: Why did Homeland Security allow two major bridges serving literally the crossroads of America, to be closed simultaneously? If terrorists wanted to attack and strike terror in the heartland, they could do so without large-scale loss of life. Take out the Chouteau, Broadway, and Heart of America. Cripple Kansas City and put the brakes on the American economy, that does not need any help slowing down, thank you.

Think about it: We are a town with a mighty river, but no river culture. The Army Corp of Engineers channeled the Muddy Mo to make it deep enough to accommodate year-round barge traffic. In so doing, they made the current too swift. Barges do not use the Missouri River in the Kansas City area.

I am not a local, but my husband was born and raised here. I have spent a lot of time here visiting when we were elsewhere, and I have lived here a few years now. I have seen a handful of barges total on that river in the hundreds, if not thousands, of times I have crossed it. My Aunt and Uncle lived in Buffalo, Iowa, a small town just outside Davenport. I spent a lot of time playing in the Mississippi. I saw Coast Guard vessel's every hour or so, and hundreds of barges, every day.

For these reasons, no barge traffic, and no water patrol presence, Kansas City is extremely vulnerable to an attack that would inflict major psychic damage to the populace and damage the American economy.

And even if we could get a ferry system pulled together to get people across the river and to work, once you get north of the river, we have the lousiest public transportation systems in the country. (South of the river, where the urban core is located, the public transit rocks.) We are all car dependent. Every last one of us. Our homes sit on lots that are, on average, the largest in the nation, ranch houses are everywhere, and we are spread waaayy out. We like our space! We have no light-rail or passenger train system. The population on both sides of the state line voted to spend millions to restore Union Station, a historic train station, but we don't have passenger rail service.

So there is the big picture...An automobile-dependent population, a metropolitan area divided down the middle by a huge navigable river. Two of the five main bridges are shut down, one for emergency repairs, and one for scheduled. There is no water patrol presence of any sort, local, state, federal or Coast Guard. There is no existing barge fleet to press into service. Even if we could get people in an emergency situation across the river, we do not have the public transit infrastructure to deliver them to their jobs on the other side. Even if the Corps could bring in pontoon bridges, they couldn't handle the volume of traffic Kansas City experiences on a daily basis.

I'm reluctant to hit post, I don't want to give anyone any ideas. But this is a real and the risks are high and the stakes are tremendous. This is a situation that I should not have to point out on a blog. The people in Kansas City should be aware of this and what contingencies are in place. But first, I guess someone besides me has to care. The ball got dropped here. Homeland Security fell asleep at the switch. They should come down hard on Kansas for going ahead with non-emergent bridge repairs. There is a hell of a lot more at stake than Kansas' claim to fame of smooth highways.