Is going green with your commute worth it? Lessons from 4 Kansas Citians who tried it
For six weeks this fall, Kansas City residents on both sides of the state line embarked on a friendly competition: to travel throughout the day without driving alone using a traditional gas car.
The Green Commute Challenge, now in its 14th year, allowed teams of commuters from various companies and agencies to log their trips, earn points and win prizes for environmentally-friendly travel throughout the Kansas City area. The event is organized annually by RideshareKC, with options including using personal or shared ebikes, electric scooters, taking the bus or streetcar, walking, carpooling or driving an electric car.
In car-centric Kansas City, it can be difficult to navigate daily life using more environmentally friendly options, but it is possible. We wanted to see what challenges — and unexpected advantages — exist here for walkers, bikers and public transit passengers.
In October, RideKC buses served just under one million riders, while the streetcar served around 142,000 riders, according to city data. Less than 3% of workers in Kansas City, and 1% in the metro, use the bus to commute. Earlier this year, Kansas Citians told The Star that there was a lot they love about RideKC, but infrequent or unreliable service and too few routes can make the system difficult to count on.
“It’s really a 50/50 for me,” rider Aaron Griffin told The Star over the summer. “Sometimes it’s good and on time, other times it’s late or early and leaves before it should. Every day is different.”
Beyond the bus, Kansas City has installed around 30 miles of bike lanes over the past two years.
“It’s really exciting and shows the eagerness of the city to change the footprint of our city from being car-centric to allowing for other modes,” said Bailey Waters, chief mobility officer for Kansas City Public Works, at a celebration for the 30-mile milestone.
Even with this added infrastructure, bikers and pedestrians are still at risk in the metro — 43 were killed in traffic accidents just last year.
To learn more about what it really takes to remove a car from your KC routine, The Star followed four Green Commute Challenge participants as they walked, biked, rode and drove through highly variable fall weather in the metro. In addition to getting to and from work, some used green transit methods to get to meetings throughout the day, ferry their kids to school, run errands or attend events in their free time.
While participants who spoke with The Star shared positive experiences and a desire to continue their green commutes through the winter, they also expressed the need for continued improvements to the city’s green transportation infrastructure. Suggestions included bike lanes protected by more than just painted lines, better scheduling and tracking mechanisms for buses and awareness campaigns for drivers on bikers’ right to share the road.
Here’s what they experienced and what tips they have to offer for a greener commute in Kansas City.
Sydney
Civil engineer Sydney Crandall commutes between two “hills” to get to work: from her home on Union Hill to her office in the Quality Hill neighborhood of downtown. She was on the team that helped the city design its streetcar extensions. That construction is still underway on the long uphill stretch of Main St. that connects the Union Station area to Midtown.
Perks: Crandall’s green commute this fall combined walking and taking the streetcar, which she recalled was often empty in the early hours of the morning.
“There’s not that many transit riders in Kansas City in general — most people commute by car,” she told The Star. “It’s been encouraging to me to not take my car to work every single day.”
Overall, she said that her modified commute helped reduce stress and that she had a positive experience participating in the challenge.
Challenges: Some challenges Crandall faced included the streetcar’s tracking app showing incorrect wait times, cold weather making her morning and evening walks uncomfortable, and experiencing street harassment downtown on her way to and from the office.
“It definitely happens more than I expected,” she said, estimating that she got catcalled once or twice a week throughout the challenge. “I do carry around pepper spray just in case.”
Crandall added that while the challenge was a fun way to reduce her carbon emissions, she will likely return to driving in to work on very cold days this winter.
Takeaways: “I would love to have more tracking, better tracking on the streetcar and bus routes,” Crandall said. “It’s been helpful for me to actually get involved in using transit to get places and kind of understanding the work that I’m doing.”
Abby
Abby Mueller, a municipal court prosecutor for Kansas City, is an avid cyclist who used the Green Commute Challenge to dive even deeper into her favorite mode of transportation. Despite the hassle of changing clothes multiple times a day to shift between work and biking, she set a goal this fall to bike 30 miles every day.
Perks: Mueller used the challenge as an opportunity to bike between meetings around the city during the work day, and would sometimes go on extra rides after work to complete her daily goal. This was on top of her 7-mile commute between her home in Brookside and her office downtown.
Challenges: “The cold weather didn’t change my green commuting commitment – but it was certainly much less fun,” Mueller told The Star. “I’ve come to work where my feet are so cold they start to hurt.”
Little can phase Mueller’s passion for biking, but she added that icy conditions and debris on the city’s bike lanes made her commute much more difficult. In past years, she has taken vacation days to avoid biking when there is ice on the roads. She also noted that days-old snow and road debris like broken glass often get pushed into bike lanes, which the city rarely clears.
“If they own the equipment (to clean bike lanes) they are not using the equipment,” she said.
City spokesperson Heather Frierson told The Star that the Parks Department is currently in charge of clearing bike lanes, and does so using “a Bobcat and an attachment.” She added that Public Works will be asking for six machines to clear bike lanes in their upcoming budget request.
Takeaways: Overall, Mueller hopes for more bike infrastructure to arrive in the metro, and for the city to dedicate more resources to keeping it clean, so she can continue cycling wherever possible.
“The more bike lanes they add, the better,” she said. “The more people that (commute without a car), the further the city will go.”
Zach
Father of two Zach Flanders recently purchased a cargo e-bike to take his young children to and from their schools — just in time for the Green Commute Challenge.
Perks: Flanders works from home, and his wife walks to work, making their commutes highly sustainable — but replacing the morning and afternoon car rides to preschool and elementary school was the family’s way of making their travel even more environmentally friendly.
“They want to go everywhere on the e-bike,” Flanders said of his two children. “They cry if they have to go in the car.” He described his daily trips to school as a fun and relaxing experience for the family.
Challenges: Flanders’ main hurdle was the safety of Kansas City’s roads and bike lanes. He told The Star that he takes a roundabout route to and from school every day in order to avoid major roads, sometimes dismounting the bike and waiting to cross busy streets along with pedestrians.
“Although there have been quite a few improvements in the past couple years to make our streets safer, Kansas City is still far, far behind other cities that I have visited and ridden in,” he said.
Takeaways: Flanders shared that he didn’t feel comfortable riding with his kids on some roads, even those that do have designated bike lanes, because they lack physical barriers to protect cyclists from cars. He noted that more physical barriers are needed in order for cyclists to feel safe, especially when riding with their children.
Gayle
Air quality researcher Gayle Bergman works for the Unified Government of Wyandotte County and Kansas City, Kansas. While she already drives an electric car, she set out to utilize the city’s shared e-bikes and public transportation during the Green Commute Challenge.
“I think having the name ‘challenge’ in the initiative is apt, as it truly is a challenge to have a green commute with so much of our transportation infrastructure designed for cars and not for people,” she told The Star.
Perks: Bergman took advantage of the 80 free minutes per day that KCK government employees are offered on the city’s shared e-bikes. She made a total of five round trips to and from work, and made an estimated 15-20 more trips outside of her commute.
Challenges: Bergman found it difficult to take advantage of the public bus system, saying that buses only came around once an hour. And while sharing rides in her electric car may have helped take some gas cars off the road, she noted that scheduling conflicts with coworkers made it an unrealistic option for commuting.
“Ultimately, carpooling is hard to do,” she said. “We would be better served with fast, frequent transit that had good coverage and a network of streets that better accommodated bikes, and not just cars.”
Takeaways: Bergman recalled that aggressive drivers and debris-filled bike lanes made this method of transportation intimidating, especially to newer riders. She added that she bikes in Kansas City, Missouri more often than she does in Kansas City, Kansas because its bike lane network is more robust.
“A lot of people would bike, if they felt it was safe,” she said. “They don’t do it because it’s not safe and because the routes are disconnected.”
Challenge results
In total, 301 participants joined the Green Commute Challenge on 23 teams. Around one third of them were employees of city government agencies. The turnout was higher than last year’s total of 221 people.
“More than half of the challenge participants were first-time participants,” said organizer Rachel Krause. “We were excited to be reaching a new audience, while also re-engaging with users that were already familiar with us.”
This year’s participants logged 6,325 green commute trips, traveling over 68,975 miles. Krause shared that they collectively saved 56,043 pounds of CO2 from being emitted into the atmosphere– that’s around 25.4 metric tons, or about the same amount released by driving a gasoline-powered car for five and a half years.
Do you have more questions about getting around Kansas City without a gas car? Ask the Service Journalism team at kcq@kcstar.com.
This story was originally published November 28, 2022 at 6:00 AM with the headline "Is going green with your commute worth it? Lessons from 4 Kansas Citians who tried it."
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