Kansas City, MO: Do as I say, not as I do

This is going to be a snarky post.  The City website has this to say about snow removal on their website:

• The City of Kansas City, Mo., requests that residents, businesses and organizations clear sidewalks adjacent to their homes and offices to help pedestrians to get to school, work and home. The City’s Municipal Code (Sec. 64-246) requires individuals owning or occupying property on streets, boulevards and highways to remove snow and ice from the sidewalks in front or alongside their property.

As a cyclist I’ve ridden on a lot of streets, and the only place I’ve noticed any problems with sidewalks is on places where the city itself is responsible for them.  Specifically, I have seen no attempts to clear snow along Chouteau Trafficway on the sidewalks or park trail that substitutes for the same, between the North Kansas City border and the Chouteau Crossings Shopping center.  I have seen a lot of footprints along that stretch, as people have used those sidewalks to run necessary errands.

For that matter, bicycle lanes aren’t given attention either. They are used as convenient places for the plows to put snow. Why, they even put a pack that turned into a big pile of ice right in front of the bicycle shop in the Riverfront area!

End of snark. I know they have a lot to do, but it is just one more evidence that the cyclist and the pedestrian are the invisible people in this great city of the West.