Missouri Bicycle News

Editorial writer Lewis Duiguid of the Kansas City Star:

Bicycling around the Kansas City area seems to have gotten a bit tougher this year.

Car and truck traffic used to be easier to avoid on Grand Boulevard north of Truman Road and on Gillham Road from Linwood Boulevard north of 31st Street. But “improvements” have reduced traffic lanes, making the roads less friendly for cyclists.

It makes no sense to purposely take out what could be bike lanes when gas has been so high. But other things have happened during the summer, showing that people have miles to go before they’ll share the road with cyclists.

People on bikes have been killed downtown and in suburban cities. But police also reported in July that three men in a car fired paintballs at a cyclist and pedestrian in Budd Park.

Such attacks are disturbing. Michelle, 29, told me that she was assaulted while riding her bike. The woman, who bikes 7½ miles round-trip to her job downtown, had been biking about five hours with her friends on June 27. . . .

Kansas City must change from being a car town to one that embraces biking, walking and mass transit.

Not only are we making the streets less accommodating for bicyclists and pedestrians, our crime rate is so high it discourages people from trying to walk or bicycle.

Besides the assaults, we have had two people killed--murdered--while bicycling in the Kansas City area in the past year.

The family of one of the murder victims, Robert Osborn, has set up a foundation to do something about it.

The Osborn family's SafeRoutesSafeCity campaign points out that Kansas City's per capita violent crime rate is many times the crime rate of other major cities such as Chicago, Denver, Louisville, Pittsburgh, or New York.

One of the few cities that is even worse than Kansas City? St. Louis.

Kansas City's murder rate is about 4 times the nation average, while St. Louis is nearly 6 times the national average.

Both KC and St. Louis are well above the national average for robbery, assault, burglary, theft, and auto theft, as well.

Engineering streets for greater bicycle and pedestrian safety is one thing.

But making our citizens feel secure about their personal safety is just as important for making our cities walkable and bicycleable.

The Missouri Bicycle Federation challenges our cities and citizens to get behind programs that will really make a difference in making our cities safer.

There is no reason for St. Louis to have murder rate over double that of Chicago, or Kansas City to have murder, rape, and burglary rates over 3 times New York City. permanent link to article: "Kansas City's excruciatingly high crime rate makes life tough for bicylists"
posted by Brent Hugh at 10/01/2006 08:08:00 AM |comment on this article