A Better Way to Connect

PUBLISHED JULY 2025

Well, the grand high poohbahs of regional transit planning have proffered their latest long-range vision for how we’ll get around 25 years hence. Well, you, anyway—I don’t expect to be burning oxygen by then.

The good news? Last month’s release of Connected KC 2050 doesn’t project any additional expansions for the Downtown streetcar system (but hold that thought for a moment). It identifies 289 significant projects for which most of the funding is likely to be available—$52 billion for the biggest chunk of the work, with $7 billion still needed to come from … somewhere. 

The bad news? This document doesn’t call for ripping out the bike lanes that have inverted the Star Trek creed; here on Planet KC, the needs of the few outweigh the needs of the many. 

In the five years since the abomination along Gillham Road turned the morning commute into the psychological equivalent of waterboarding and ruined a glorious two-lane spread of pavement linking Midtown to Downtown, the urban visionaries’ mind virus has continued to evolve. Or metastasize.

More recently, the travesty continues along Wornall Road—the new bottleneck created by the 75th Street makeover is particularly noteworthy—as well as Gregory Boulevard and other choice locations.

Begging the question: At what point does the emperor recognize that he’s mooning the parade so we can jack-hammer our streets back to their designed purpose? We were promised brigades of dedicated bicyclists who, if only the lanes were available, would throw off the shackles of motorized personal transit in favor of two-wheeling to work or recreational activities, and reduce those pesky CO2 emissions, to boot.

Instead, we got a stretch from the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art to Children’s Mercy on Hospital Hill, with a ridership you can usually count on one hand (thumb excluded) during the busiest times of the day. At this point, it might be considered rude of me not to have formally introduced myself to that guy I see using it when I’m heading Downtown each morning.

Were I to launch a mayoral campaign at some point, my platform would consist of a single priority: Rip ’Em Out.

It’s long past time for our policy czars to admit that we were sold a bill of goods with this bike-friendly transformation of Kansas City. This city’s fathers bequeathed unto us a magnificent system of broad boulevards. We shame ourselves by rejecting their vision.

And while we’re at the shame game, shouldn’t we declare the end to the expansion of transit by rail? In this, the 10th year of the main streetcar line’s operation, the controlling authority boasts of more than 5.5 million riders since the ribbon-cutting in 2016. That comes to a whopping 1,500 a day, every day of that decade. And even that figure is inflated by the occasional mass-draw from events like the Big XII basketball tournament or a major concert at T-Mobile Arena. 

Mass transit, it ain’t.

With work progressing on the UMKC extension ($351 million for 3.6 miles) and the Riverfront extension ($61.1 million for 0.7 miles), the completed 6-1/2 mile stretch will have black-holed $525 million—more than $80 million a mile—but has done little to resolve transit issues at scale. Admit it: It’s a novelty. It can’t ever be more than that. 

Consider this: Various sources place Downtown’s residential population at between 14,000 and 20,000 in 2016. Last fall, that figure was updated to 33,276—still below the 40,000 that urbanologists say is needed to create the critical mass of a self-sustaining population. Rail was going to fix that. 

Indeed, developers claim more than $4 billion in investment to date along the streetcar corridor. But more than $300,000 in development costs for each additional resident? Really?

All of the numbers here argue for a better transit solution that would meet residential, commuter and employer needs. It’s not bikes. It’s not streetcars. 

It’s buses. Lots of ’em.

KCATA data showed 1.1 million bus rides last October—about 50,000 for every workday of the month. The math does not augur in favor of rails here.

Mass Transit magazine says a new, compressed-natural-gas city bus will set you back $519,000, with a typical 12-year lifespan (or $43,500 a year). Hire three drivers to cover a route 24/7, and pay them $100,000 a year (jobs Americans just might do!). Over 12 years, that works out to 127 new bus routes for the same $525 million we’ll have spent on the streetcar—even if streetcar maintenance and replacement costs were zero. (Spoiler alert: They’re not.)

We need to move people, not boost civic egos. The streetcar was a great benefit to those companies blessed to win part of the construction contracts. Good on ’em. And it marginally improves customer numbers for bars and restaurants nearby. But it’s not going to solve our transit issues any more than bike lanes will.

Isn’t it time for real solutions?