Each goal has strategies specific to achieving it. Many of those strategies apply to multiple goals. Throughout the planning process, we identified a set of broader strategies that may not be specific to a goal or set of goals but underlie the entire plan and play an important role in realizing our regional vision.
Prioritize investments
The regional multimodal transportation system faces significant challenges that threaten to reduce the impact the system can make toward achieving our regional vision — aging infrastructure, development patterns that reduce the ability of residents to access opportunities, and incomplete pedestrian and bicycle networks that reduce connectivity and safety. Funding available for transportation today is increasingly uncertain and inadequate to maintain the system at current levels, let alone invest in improvements to address these challenges.
This puts pressure on chosen investments, requiring that they bring benefits across multiple outcomes. This means projects should incorporate more than one of the following strategies to bring benefits to the most people, making our limited resources go further:
- Coordinate transportation infrastructure and services with local land uses
- Support the efficient movement of people, goods and services
- Increase mobility and accessibility for all users of the system
- Improve equity
- Foster safe travel
- Reduce pollutants that are harmful to health
- Incorporate stormwater management best practices to protect water quality and reduce the volume of runoff.
One of the key roles of Connected KC 2050 is to identify and prioritize significant future transportation projects for the region.
MARC asked local governments, state departments of transportation, public transportation providers and other organizations to submit applications for projects that would advance the regional vision and respond to regional needs identified in the planning process to connect people to vibrant places and strong communities.
