e-biking in Kansas City
a guide to using an e-bike for everyday transportation
Author: Dave
-
Perhaps no one has a better sense for just how trashy Kansas City is than cyclists. The city’s bike lanes are full of litter and debris. The bike trails, especially segments in the woods, serve as free landfills, fouled by pickup loads of junk. Roadsides and parks are full of trash. Streams have belched garbage…
-
Both Missouri and Kansas have recently passed laws regulating e-bikes. Before that, e-bikes fell into a gray area between bicycles and motorized vehicles. All e-bikes are legal on streets and on most paths. Class 3 e-bikes, which provide assist up to 28 mph (the fastest category of e-bikes), can be banned from paths and trails,…
-
While riding on the trail that parallels the Blue River north of MLK Jr Boulevard, I came upon three small children riding northbound and a little further along two more small children. I was alarmed that these kids were riding alone on this trail when I noticed a man driving slowly along Coal Mine Road…
-
As Fall arrives, the Brush Creek trail takes on a yellow and gold hue. Bridges carry the Bruce Watkins Drive over Brush Creek. The entire route from the Plaza to the eastern terminus near the Blue River is completely grade separated from traffic.
-
The new protected bike lanes on Emanuel Cleaver II Boulevard between Oak Street and Troost Avenue are now complete, giving cyclists a safe connection between the Trolley Track Trail to the south and the Gillham Road protected lanes to the north. It’s a short but important link in the city’s bike-lane network. Cleaver II Blvd.…
-
Before the city created dedicated bike lanes on Gillham a few years ago, we had identified a nearby parallel route to avoid using Gillham: southbound on Charlotte Street and northbound on Holmes Road–two one-way streets with a gentler grade and little traffic just to the east of Gillham. Gillham was just too busy to recommend.…
-
E-bikers get the best feel for the canopy of trees in our city. That canopy is both grand and neglected. Glorious and sad. When I ride Route G: Benton, with its aging canopy of pin oaks, I wonder what our boulevards were like before the Dutch elm disease destroyed nearly all of the American elms…
-
The Benton Curve is an ominous, dangerous bend taken by I-70 east of downtown, a much reviled example of poor civil engineering. Benton Boulevard, which is more an assemblage of several road segments into an official KC boulevard, is a great way to get around on the East Side on an e-bike. The segment of…
-
The urban arterial freeway known as Emanuel Cleaver II Boulevard is getting two of the best protected cycling lanes in the city between Troost Ave and Oak Street, eliminating the gap between the Trolley Track Trail and the Gillham protected lanes.
-
I’m reluctant to criticize Brookside, with its generous sidewalks, excellent mix of mainly local businesses, streets lined with buildings. But it gets a C- for bike racks. On Brookside Plaza, the central shopping street, there is one forlorn rack in front of Commerce Bank on the south end, and another around the corner on 63rd…
e-biking in Kansas City 