Sure, Missouri could use a highway upgrade. But why not shoot for commuter rail, too? | Opinion

Highways, trains

Missouri Gov. Mike Parson is not wrong to advocate and request funds for the expansion of Interstate 70 in the Kansas City area. (Jan. 22, 19A, “Kansas City has lots of freeways. What would more I-70 lanes help?”) However, every world-class city has a commuter rail system that is usually heavily used, and one here would be a welcome supplement to the numbing and endless building and rebuilding of highways.

I think Missouri and Kansas should invest in both networks in partnership. Kansas politicians should not be cowed.

- William King, Spring Hill, Kansas

Revolting roads

Dear Gov. Mike Parson and Missouri state legislators: You speak of expanding highway lanes while you have humiliated yourselves and our state with your failure to fund the Missouri Department of Transportation well enough to hire and pay maintenance crews. The state’s pathetic pay rates make hiring impossible.

Worker shortages have left our roads looking like an undeveloped nation’s with hundreds of miles of major highways unmaintained. Barrier fences are ripped down and the medians are filled with weeds and brush. Hundreds of guardrails are damaged, endangering the public, and similarly overgrown. Thousands of lane-marking poles are mowed down, bent and left to rot. MoDOT has no capability to pick up the untold tons of trash lining our roads, and the grass gets cut once per year.

Out-of-state visitors are astonished at the ugliness of Missouri’s highways and ask us how all this can be. When we drive from Kansas City to Johnson County on Interstate 35, we see the clean, well-maintained Kansas roadway infrastructure with trimmed grass — and we think we are on a different planet.

Missouri roads are humiliating. Please fix this first, Gov. Parson. You are responsible.

- Jeff Gerner, Gladstone

For the kids

Every day, 22 children and teens are shot in the United States, according to Brady | United Against Gun Violence. Pediatric firearm injury is one of the top three causes of death for children and the leading cause of death for adolescents. The American Academy of Pediatrics estimates that more than 4.6 million children live in homes with an unsecured firearm.

Unfortunately, teaching children to be safe is not enough. Children are naturally curious and impulsive. A child as young as 3 has the strength to pull a trigger. As a pediatrician, I have seen many unfortunate injuries and deaths from both unintentional accidents and suicide.

Here are the safest ways to store firearms:

▪ Firearms should be unloaded.

▪ Firearms should be locked.

▪ Ammunition should be stored and locked away separately.

In Kansas City, Kansas, gun locks are free at police headquarters or any station with no questions asked. In Missouri, the Kansas City Police Department also gives away gun locks at its East Patrol station through a program with Project ChildSafe.

I encourage you to reach out to your pediatrician or local law enforcement and create a plan that would work best for your family.

- Maya Gibson, Kansas City

Christian schools

National Lutheran Schools Week is being observed this week in my Lutheran church body. Under the theme “Making Disciples for Life,” it will lift more than 1,800 Lutheran preschools, elementary schools and high schools that provide a Christ-centered education to more 180,000 students across the land.

In that light, how disheartening to read a Jan. 22 letter to the editor (19A) that used the tragedy at Agape Boarding School in southwest Missouri to warn readers: “When people come toward you proclaiming how much they love the Lord: Hang on to your wallet.”

While what occurred at Agape was indeed sinful and extremely harmful for the students and families who were victims, one isolated tragedy is no reason to incriminate all Christian schools, or Christians for that matter. Jesus himself warned us in Matthew 7:15 to watch out for those who “come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves.” But he didn’t raise suspicions or cast judgment on the countless true sheep of his flock. Rather, Jesus said in John 10:14: “I know my sheep and my sheep know me.”

We should all heed the old lesson of not throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

- Rev. Thomas Harries, Lenexa

Getting heated

I never thought I would see Ray Bradbury’s “Fahrenheit 451” moved to the nonfiction section. Florida must be very proud. (Jan. 23, KansasCity.com, “Florida rejects AP African American Studies course, claiming it ‘lacks educational value’”)

- Steve McGiffert, Leawood