Miguel Franco

For our final studio project, we were assigned different mobility hubs across the bistate corridor. The mobility hubs would assist the bistate reinvestment corridor in addressing issues such as access to housing, a reduction of carbon emissions and creating a more pedestrian friendly area by reducing the usage of vehicles and improving access to public transit via mobility hubs.

The focus on this mobility would be on Independence Square, located on the intersection of Truman and Noland roads. This already existing transit stop can add more connection from Independence to the greater Kansas City area. Existing is the roundabout bus stop for busses in independence. This transit stop adds access to the surrounding Independence with frequencies that are more that 30 minutes apart and could simply be better for the community.

While keeping the existing transit stop and improving frequencies, this could be the start of the improvement of the mobility hub for Independence Square. In addition, the area would see the installation of new homes and apartments, which would create a denser area suitable for heavy transit use.

The existing land use around the mobility hub shows that it is mostly public area. This is staying the same as far as zoning goes, the surrounding area around the mobility hub is mostly single-family zoning and some multifamily zoning. These are where most of the empty lots are, and we are going to add our infill of houses single family 2-3 bedroom and also our 166-unit apartments as well as our 6-unit 2-3 bedroom townhomes.

The Implementation of this project would start with the infill housing project and adding housing within the half mile radius.

The second stage would start the construction of the transit center for our proposed streetcar stop, the stop would start with the implementation of electric busses but could potentially shift to a streetcar in the future following studies of how the new transit stop works. The second stage will also install the bike lane and make use of the parking garage on the first floor to add the bike share floor for those who choose to use biking as their form of transit.

The final stage of implementation would just finish up a couple of details such as adding a resource for the community and finish the mobility hub building. Once this project is finished the greater connection to Kansas City can be analyzed and studied for to decide if a streetcar would be suitable for this area in the grander scheme of the Bistate corridor.