KCP&L announces “green” campus, except for transportation
KCP&L is patting themselves on the back with their announcement of a new green office campus in south Kansas City. The facility will be LEED certified and feature lots sustainible energy features. Unfortunately, the new campus’ green credentials fall very short in one important area: transportation.
The semi-rural area at I-470 and Raytown Road is a highly auto-dependent location with no bus service. The nearest bus stop is two miles away, and the connecting streets do not have sidewalks. It is in stark contrast to the transit-rich location of KCP&L’s headquarters at 12th and Main in Downtown. Can KCP&L really claim to be building a green campus when the employees that work there will be dependent on the automobile to get to work? Do you think KCP&L will be buying carbon offsets to remediate the impact of employees’ car commuting?
This is one more example of how the sustainability conversation in Kansas City often leaves out the transportation piece. And that is a problem because transportation contributes more than a third of our greenhouse gas emissions. The metro area’s grand vision of being “America’s Green Region” will never be attainable until we start putting transportation’s environmental impact at the top of the agenda.
