Sky Yount has relied on Kansas City’s public transit for three years. It’s slowed the pace of their life, and Yount said the bus makes the community feel smaller. Mostly, Yount likes being able to zone out on the way to their job at the library instead of “screaming as I’m trying to merge into four lanes of traffic.”
Yount takes the 31, which runs along 31st Street every 15 minutes, to and from work. Most of the Kansas City Area Transportation Authority’s buses come less often. When Yount wants to go out to dinner or has an appointment, it takes more planning.
“I mostly thought that I was going to have trouble learning the routes and everything and finding out where I needed to go,” Yount said. “But it's pretty easy to look up the routes. It's just hard to figure out if they're still there, if they're still running.”
The KCATA has fewer routes than it’s had in decades. In the past few years, Independence, Blue Springs, Gladstone, Raytown, Liberty, Parkville and Riverside have cut their funding to the agency — which, in turn has killed most of the suburban Missouri routes.
More lines and driver jobs are on the chopping block, with Kansas City set to pass a budget with one million dollars less for the KCATA than last year. That could make it harder for people to access jobs, appointments, groceries and entertainment.
Kansas City could miss major economic development projects and an influx of prospective transplants, said Robert Puentes, a national transportation expert with the Brookings Institute.
“It is hard for me to imagine, given these larger pressures — around climate, around traffic congestion, around household spending — how you can have a really effective city without having an effective transit network,” Puentes said.
Service suffers as funding declines
The answer to fixing the system seems simple: Money. Getting that funding is the hard part.
Right now, Kansas City is the only municipality in the area that funds the KCATA with a dedicated source of tax revenue. It funds its bus services through a 3/8th-cent sales tax that goes entirely to KCATA and another half-cent public mass transportation tax.
The surrounding cities mostly contribute using money from their general funds, which makes it more likely to get cut if the city has to scramble on other costs. Most of the suburbs stopped allocating money to the agency — though they provided the least to begin with.
Puentes said that shows the rest of the metro isn’t committed to a robust transit system.
“You can't run a transit system on the cheap,” Puentes said. “You can do it effectively and you can do it efficiently, and you don't have to spend enormous sums of money, but it does require resources.”
Last year, the Mid-America Regional Council released a report comparing the KCATA to 10 peer agencies and four aspirational agencies like Denver and Minneapolis. It found that Kansas City put far less money into bus service than its peers.
The metro spent about $46 per person on transportation in 2022. That puts it 12th out of the 15 cities MARC analyzed in its report. The aspirational cities spent an average of $138 during that time.
Ron Achelpohl, MARC’s director of transportation and environment, said the metro doesn’t have the public transportation it deserves because it lacks proper funding.
“Because the KCATA can only deliver service where they get funding for it — and they really have to work at each individual city or county in the region to get that — we have a patchwork of services,” Achelpohl said.
Still, the KCATA ranked second-most productive agency in the MARC study in terms of trips per revenue hour, and had the third-lowest cost per trip.
Tensions rise between Kansas City and the KCATA
Nearly all of the 3/8th-cent KCATA Sales Tax, about $40.6 million, is slated to go to the agency under Kansas City’s 2025-2026 proposed budget. But despite KCATA’s relatively high performance, Kansas City has steadily diverted more of its public mass transportation tax from the agency to other purposes.
The city budgeted less than two-thirds of the tax, or about $30.4 million for the KCATA, down from nearly all of it over the past decade.
A few years ago, the city paid for new streetlights with more than $22 million of the mass transportation tax, which was about equal to KCATA’s cost to keep buses fare-free.
But when the then CEO Robbie Makinen complained about the diversion and tried to get the state to step in, City Manager Brian Platt and Mayor Quinton Lucas sought to remove him. He was forced to resign in 2022.
City officials frequently allege that the agency’s service issues stem from financial mismanagement and possible corruption.
Frank White III, who took over as CEO three years ago, said that isn’t the case. He said the agency under his leadership has cut costs, improved efficiency and made the KCATA more transparent.
“We have no secrets here,” White said. “When I hear stuff about misappropriation or costs, but no facts behind it, it almost sounds like slander.”
But Platt said the city still believes the agency’s overhead and administrative costs are too high, and that some bus routes can be run for less.
“We're hoping that before we start to add money into something that isn't truly as efficient and as high quality as it possibly can, that we look inward and we try to think about if there's a way to do this better and cheaper and deliver a better service,” Platt said.
Kansas City representatives currently make up about a third of KCATA’s 10-member board, with others coming from other jurisdictions. Platt said the city deserves to have more control of the board because they fund the bulk of the agency.
David Johnson is a transit consultant who also serves on the board of the Kansas City Regional Transit Alliance. He worked in planning and strategy at KCATA for four years. Johnson left the KCATA shortly before Makinen’s ouster because of the agency’s fractured relationship with the city.
He said adding more Kansas City representatives to the agency’s board, or rooting out what the city considers corruption, won’t mean people get better service. KCATA plans its service based on how much money it has.
“The governance arguments that people make are sort of a petty argument that wouldn't result in any substantive changes for people who need mobility,” Johnson said. “The real problem is lack of resources and the uneven contribution of the region to transit in general.”
What comes next
Without more funding from Kansas City, the KCATA will likely have to cut at least five routes. According to documents obtained by KCUR, the city’s existing funding for the KCATA isn’t enough to maintain its existing service. The agency is looking at eliminating the 9, 19, 25, 29 and 71 routes.
But those cuts won’t fix its funding woes.
The KCATA is looking into creating its own revenue by selling ads on buses and shelters and seeking more funding from Kansas and Missouri. White said the agency will provide as many fast and frequent bus routes as possible, but can only sustain what the local governments are willing to pay for.
“People haven’t invested in transit because we've not told enough compelling story to why it matters,” White said. “We don't talk about how having an effective transit system gets people to education, employment, health care and housing. But we have to be at the table to articulate that vision in a compelling way that makes sense to people.”
Transit and climate activist groups have been pushing the city, Jackson County and surrounding municipalities to put more money into transit.
Last month, the climate action group Sunrise Movement, which Yount is a member of, held rallies outside of Jackson County Executive Frank White Jr.’s house and disrupted a legislative session to call for a regional tax. About 100 people with low-wage worker group Stand Up KC and the Amalgamated Transit Union that represents KCATA bus drivers rallied outside KCATA headquarters in January to demand the city chip in more.
So far, there’s been no movement on either issue.
The Kansas City Regional Transit Alliance hopes to put a transit tax for the major counties around Kansas City on the ballot in the next year and a half.
“The idea is that this would be a safe and sustainable funding source for transit that doesn't have to be questioned every budget cycle instead,” said Josh Boehm, a board member for the organization. “It can be sustainable, and then that allows a transit agency and communities to be more proactive about adding new service and improving service where it exists today.”
Puentes, the transit expert, said these types of taxes almost always pass, even in cities like Kansas City that don’t have the biggest transit systems.
“We see almost every single election day that, across the country, people are willing to pay for the public transit that their regions need,” Puentes said.
Kansas City will pass its budget by the end of March, and activists have asked for more transit funding at the two most recent budget listening sessions. Yount hopes the city council listens.
“We're not expecting them to fully fund them and improve anything,” Yount said. “But just making sure that no lines and no bus driver jobs are cut, that would be a great start.”
