MISSION, Kan. — The City of Mission is hosting two public open houses Wednesday for its city-wide "bicycle and pedestrian connections study."
According to its website, the study "focuses on planning a city-wide bicycle, pedestrian, and trail network that will allow residents to use active transportation to move around Mission to key destinations and connect into the Greater Kansas City Metro Area Trails."
The study is a "Planning for Sustainable Places" project and is using funding awarded by the Mid-America Regional Council.
The community can share their concerns and ideas when it comes to walking and biking in the city.
The city posted this interactive map about the city's active transportation. Residents are able to comment and address certain areas they believe need to be addressed.
The open houses will be an opportunity for the public to look at the initial network design concepts and share their thoughts and ideas.
Lisa Schulties works in Mission and shared her thoughts about getting around the area.
"If you're going down Shawnee Mission Parkway over here, there's no sidewalk on one side of the street, the other one's really removed," she said. "Bicyclists, people aren't watching for them. There aren't a lot of bicycle lanes and one of the women I work with rides her bicycle a lot and she has to pick different ways to go because you want to be safe, 'cause there's no straight, obvious way to get around without a car."
She said she hopes there will be more bike lanes and improvements that make walking safer and easier.
The city states it's partnering with "RDG Planning & Design, BHC, and Venice Communications to lead efforts to design a network of on-and-off street facilities."
RDG lead consultant Marty Shukert says the open houses are the public's opportunity to see the initial design concepts and share their ideas.
"[We are] asking for reactions, for ideas, for specific problems from different people's point of view on what sorts of things they'd like to see and then doing our best to work those in," Shukert said.
He says the next step is take the ideas that are generated and then refine them.
"We look at what that means in terms of specific dimensions on the ground, at constructability because it's very easy to draw a line and sometimes can be very hard to build it," Shukert said. "So it's doing something that's feasible and that accomplishes the most good in terms of people's priorities."
The two public open houses are at Powell Community Center, Conference Room E. There's one from 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. Wednesday and another one from 6:30 p.m. to 8 p.m.
