L&T Publisher Earl Watt
No, I’m not going to address the county tax increase today. I believe there are enough members of the community taking a keen interest in remedies, and we will report on those efforts as information becomes available.
Needless to say, the natives are restless. Justifiably so. And while this decision has created a rift in our community, there are other efforts being discussed by other entities that are looking to a more positive future.
For one, the City of Liberal is exploring the option of changing downtown to angle parking and a more pedestrian friendly district for about three blocks.
Three blocks. Not a mile. Not half a mile. Three blocks.
And that is a reasonable plan that will change our downtown in ways we cannot even imagine, all of them good.
Before we address the positives, let’s look at what some of the naysayers have shared.
“We need to get a second overpass first.”
A second overpass would not be placed on Kansas Avenue, so having a way over the tracks does absolutely nothing to Downtown Liberal. Whether you are waiting on Kansas, Pershing, Clay or Western, you are still waiting. For some reason, people think adding parking spaces on Kansas Avenue affects how long we will wait on a train. Downtown traffic has zero affect on train traffic or the length of time it takes for a train to go through Liberal. The two proposals are not linked in any tangible way.
Currently, if a train holds you up on Kansas Avenue, you already have the option of going to another street. And waiting there. An overpass will alleviate waiting at any intersection but has nothing to do with creating a pedestrian downtown district.
“The street is too small.”
Actually, it’s not. According to national standards on the size a street needs to be and have angle parking, Kansas Avenue is eight feed wider than needed.
“Won’t cars drive into buildings?”
Yeah, someone actually said that. While I wish I could say that would never happen, it’s always a possibility that a driver would veer off the street, jump over the curb, plow through a light pole and somehow reach the front of a building. I guess there is a risk of being attacked by a shark in Southwest Kansas as well, but it is virtually impossible.
“Backing out will be a problem.”
Except we do it every day on parking lots at Walmart, Seward County Community College and virtually everywhere else there is a parking lot, and even on the street at the Post Office.
The advantage of angle parking is that you can never get trapped in, but parallel parking leads to traps all the time. If you get squeezed in, you have no way out until someone else moves their car, but with angle parking your access to the street is always available. And because of traffic lights, there will always be a gap to pull out.
More importantly, getting in and out of your car is safer with angle parking. Instead of opening your car door into moving traffic with the current parking, you will be opening your door into no moving traffic, and getting in is the same thing.
“Emergency vehicles won’t be able to get through.”
Not true. Emergency vehicles will be able to navigate through, but we also have a south side fire station because the biggest risk is the tracks, not Kansas Avenue. And most emergency vehicles are on Fifteenth Street. They do not have to navigate down Kansas Avenue now. They have quick access to head to the existing overpass to guarantee they won’t be caught by a train. Changing three blocks of downtown would not change that.
The benefits
Businesses are already coming to downtown that need parking spaces and calmer traffic. More outdoor events are being planned including an Oktoberfest event in a few weeks. This isn’t a “build it and they will come” pipe dream. “They” are already coming, and now we need to provide the safety needed for those who are coming downtown. One restaurant on Kansas Avenue has a capacity of 99. If two people are in a car, that would be 50 cars. That takes up virtually all available space, and that’s just one downtown business. Angle parking would increase the capacity for all businesses, which increases the property value, which helps keep your home property taxes low.
We can create a district with very little investment, and all it requires of us is to thin down to two lanes for three blocks. That’s a minor inconvenience compared to the benefits.
Change is scary, I get it. But downtown districts across the country are coming back to life when communities have a chance to reinvent them into usable space. We have that chance. And we don’t have to go into debt or take a multi-million dollar risk. With some paint and concrete we can create an attractive space that will become a destination. It’s worth two lanes of traffic for three blocks.
