It’s time to start paying attention

To paraphrase one of the songs from Rogers and Hammerstein’s hit musical “Oklahoma”: “Everything’s up to date in Columbia. They’ve gone about as fer as they can go.” It makes me wonder what mechanisms are in place to keep our community up to date and out in front forever.

We are proud of our touts in a community irrigated by streams of newcomers while various institutions and businesses seem to be fairly vigilant about developments elsewhere. With Columbia Regional Airport the centerpiece of this discussion, however, Columbia now struggles to play catch up because the city and its constituents were not paying attention for a long period of time when we should have been.

“Paying attention” should be the requisite operating motto for all of us. More than 40 years have passed since the airport opened, and just now come moves to modestly lengthen the facility’s two runways and transform the aging terminal into a jet-age facility. As the University of Missouri joins the Southeast Conference, we need to gussy up our airport and do it as quickly as possible.

Falling behind

Where were we, what were we thinking all those years, and why did we fall behind so seriously?

Well, we simply weren’t paying attention to our aviation gateway.

We should always be paying attention to developments beyond our “shores.” Relative to aviation, that means paying attention to other similar communities and their surrounding “catchment” areas, with the comparably sized Bloomington-Normal, Ill., market the successful example most often cited.

Over the years, regional growth and progress has reduced the culture shock that one used to experience in arriving here from other urban areas. There was a time when matters taken for granted in larger communities took many years to reach our city. For example, it took 10 years for long distance dial telephones service to arrive, 20 years for cable television, decades for daylight saving time and liquor by the drink. Columbia never secured a mainline railroad and opted for the somnolent shores of Flat Branch Creek in lieu of the navigable, fast-paced Missouri River only nine miles away.

Before the arrival of huge shopping centers and big box stores in Columbia, periodic shopping excursions to St. Louis or Kansas City were almost obligatory. However, travel to those cities became easier in 1965 with the construction of Interstate 70.

Progress, or the absence thereof, always tangles with personalities. Advocates press for causes often as extensions of strictly personal crusades. Cable television was delayed for years as factions warred for control amidst pleas for delay. Where the trumpets of a vocal constituent group successfully blared for trails, bicycle paths and an award-winning park system, the orchestra of airport supporters until recently has been rather constrained.

We shouldn’t be so smug and conceited when it comes to our bike trails because here, too, Columbia has been late to the party. One wonders if anyone here remembers reading this item in the Oct. 11, 1973, issue of the Wall Street Journal more than a decade before the first trail was built in Columbia.

“The Bicycle Manufacturers Association boasts that laws have been passed in 14 states providing for bikeways. By one estimate, there may be as many as 25,000 miles of bikeways in the U.S. ranging from routes marked for bicyclists to paved paths exclusively for their use. Florida’s Dade County (Miami) has completed some 100 miles of bike trails in six years. Oregon, allotting 1 percent of the state highway fund for bike path construction, has set aside $4 million for work in two years and built 100 miles of paths… Wisconsin goes after old railroad rights of way. It has one 30-mile stretch in use as a bikeway and will add another 30-mile route next summer. One boost for bikeways according to the Bicycle Institute, is the new Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1973. It sees the bill as providing up to $40-million a year in matching funds for three years to construct bikeways in states…Chicago with 100 miles of bikeways, plans next spring to experiment by closing one lane of some city streets on weekends to create instant bikeways.”

Missing out

How many other things has the community missed out on or been late to adopt because we weren’t paying attention to what was going on elsewhere, or perhaps because we weren’t paying attention to an item in the media?

May I modestly suggest that we adopt a loosely structured Department of Paying Attention, perhaps as a sort of community suggestion box.

No dues, no meetings, no membership cards, no passwords or secret decoder rings. Our Department of Paying Attention would be the nexus of an Internet-based communication system for anyone interested in civic progress to keep this area up to date and out in front. Participants would pay attention to what’s going on in a zillion and one different realms here, there and anywhere else to keep us advised.

As we play catch-up with the airport while pursuing the motto to “pay attention,” let’s hope we never fall behind again.