Deanna Ricke spends her time at work helping people find jobs through Catholic Charities. Many of her clients don’t have a car and face long commutes on the bus to the area's biggest employers, or can’t get to them at all.
IRIS, Kansas City’s rideshare program, filled in the gaps so Ricke could ensure her clients could land and keep a job.
But all of that will end after Wednesday. Kansas City is ending the IRIS rideshare program, a service it launched in 2023, by the end of the day April 30.
Despite a stopgap solution meant to maintain transportation service for six months, the Kansas City Area Transportation Authority still needs more money to prevent route and frequency reductions in buses. City council members prioritized bus service when cutting IRIS, citing the need to protect bus lines before microtransit.
Ricke said the city should offer IRIS alongside bolstered bus service. Now that IRIS is ending, many of her clients will lose their jobs, she said. She isn’t sure how she’ll find them, or other people, new ones.
“I don't know what people will do,” Ricke said. “That four-hour, round-trip commute time on a bus is given the bus routes as they exist. The bus just cannot get people back and forth to work. What do we do with people who cannot get to work? I literally do not know what the options are.”
After weeks of elected leaders and transit workers struggling to find a solution for Kansas City’s transportation options, city staff recommended cutting IRIS so the program wouldn’t take away money from bus service, which needs more funding to prevent cuts.
City council members on the Transportation, Infrastructure and Operations Committee on Tuesday voted down an ordinance that would have directed the city manager to come up with funding to support IRIS. It also would have ordered the city to negotiate a 60-day extension of the program while they decided on a long-term solution.
Council member Wes Rogers sponsored the ordinance. He told KCUR that cutting IRIS, which would save the city about $6 million over six months, won’t save enough money to fully fund the KCATA.
“There's no money left to fund it any further,” Rogers said. “My primary concern was making sure the (IRIS) drivers weren't left high and dry, and they are now going to be left high and dry. My primary focus is now trying to find these drivers a place to make a living.”
The city plans to host a job fair May 8 for the more than 100 drivers who will lose their jobs.
Bakar Mohamed is one of those drivers. He drives dozens of people to work, school, medical appointments and entertainment each day. By Thursday, he will be out of a job, and many of the people he drives will be in a transportation desert.
He said he and his colleagues were shocked that the city was moving to end IRIS. They thought that the city’s funding plan to preserve transportation through October would keep IRIS around for at least that time.
"I am deeply disappointed by their choice to end IRIS," Mohamed said. "This is a program that supports me and 100 other drivers to take care of our families, and the freedom of many Kansas Citians to get to work, school, and the doctor. Council members’ decision to suspend IRIS leaves all of us in the lurch."
IRIS drivers are considered independent contractors, not employees, which means they are not eligible for unemployment benefits or severance. Mohamed and other drivers have been working to unionize with Stand Up KC.
Before voting against the ordinance that would have temporarily continued the IRIS program, council member Johnathan Duncan said the city is experiencing a “transportation crisis.” He said it was more important to maintain the bus system.
“When we're asking to make a choice, a very tough choice, between funding our bus system and funding microtransit, which is to augment the bus system, I think that choice is very clear,” Duncan said. “We need to invest and ensure that we have funds just to provide a bus service for our people.”
IRIS was created to fill gaps in the city’s transit service, specifically in the Northland and South Kansas City, which aren’t served by many fixed bus routes.
The company that operates IRIS said more than 350 people use the service each day to get to jobs at major employers in the area such as Hallmark, Ford and North Kansas City Hospital.
Ricke said the city needs both bus service and microtransit options like IRIS.
“If we are so short-sighted that we cannot fund transportation for people who want to work, we have stripped them of their dignity, we have stripped them of their ability to provide for their families,” Ricke said. “What do we expect them to do? How do we expect them to survive?”
