Kansas City will provide more than $13.3 million in additional funding to cover buses and the city’s rideshare service, IRIS. This is the second installment of funding the city and the Kansas City Area Transportation Authority agreed to in a contract they signed in August.
But that money isn’t enough to keep bus service exactly the same, and riders will see some changes starting early next year. The KCATA plans to cut two bus lines and limit hours on 13 others to bring the service into budget.
The Kansas City Council approved the funding Thursday at its last meeting of the year. That was the same day that the KCATA board announced it would not renew the contract of CEO Frank White III.
Melissa Robinson was the only council member who voted no; she said at the meeting that she believed the agency deserved more funding.
KCUR has reached out to Mayor Quinton Lucas for comment and will update this story with his response.
Tyler Means, the chief mobility and strategy officer at the KCATA, said the agency worked to avoid cuts for as long as possible, but has to fit its service into the amount of funding it has.
“We don't want to have to reduce service,” Means said. “The council seems to not want to reduce service, either. I just think we're kind of in a ‘rock and a hard place’ on this. Unfortunately, we're having to meet in the middle here, and we're trying to affect as few people as possible.”
Here are the changes and how we got to this point:
- What will happen to Kansas City's bus service?
- When will fares come back?
- What about the benches?
- Why is KCATA making changes?
- How did we get here?
- What happens now?
What changes are being made to bus service?
The KCATA plans to eliminate both the 19 and the 29 bus routes in the spring. The 19 travels through the Crossroads from Southwest Boulevard and 31st Street to 12th Street and Brooklyn Avenue. In 2024, it was one of the KCATA’s least ridden routes, with 65 riders on weekdays, according to data from the agency.
The 29 travels along the eastern edge of the city, from Ninth Street and Grand Boulevard to Holiday Drive and Blue Ridge Boulevard. According to KCATA data, the route had an average weekday ridership of 86 people.
The agency says both lines are largely duplicated by other routes (the 18 and 28, respectively) that will continue to run.
The KCATA will also change the hours of operation on the 11, 12, 18, 21, 23, 25, 27, 28, 50, 57, 71, 75 and 78 routes to run from 6 a.m. to 11 p.m. The agency said these changes will affect about 2% of daily ridership along the selected routes.
The city’s rideshare service, IRIS, will also see some service changes. Beginning in January, the rideshare will only be available in the Northland.
When will fares come back?
Kansas City directed the KCATA to bring back fares for most riders in its latest contract, which was signed in August. The KCATA must establish a “functionally free” fare model where low-income residents and people receiving aid from social service agencies would ride the bus for free.
The KCATA told the city council this week that it has completed evaluations of four fare technology providers. Its board should approve a fare policy in January.
The public should get a chance to weigh in on the fare in January. The KCATA said fare collection could begin in May or June.
What about the benches?
About 75% of the bus stops that KCATA has across the metro do not have a place to sit. The agency has removed about 70 benches since 2022. Most were removed when stops went out of service. Others, like at some downtown stops, were removed after complaints from developers and the police.
In the summer, the KCATA installed what it calls “leaning benches” at multiple stops downtown. Riders and transit activists have called the leaning benches insulting.
The climate activist group Sunrise Movement KC, which has been advocating for better public transportation in the metro, has been placing DIY benches at stops without them in response. But the KCATA has been removing those DIY benches because it calls them a liability.
Council member Johnathan Duncan introduced an amendment to the ordinance that prohibits the KCATA from removing sitting benches at bus stops or replacing sitting benches with leaning benches without the approval of the city council. It also requires the KCATA to replace its existing leaning benches with sitting benches at the stops.
The KCATA is working on a new bus stop amenity policy that would clarify when benches would be placed at stops and make it easier for riders to request them. A spokesperson for the agency said it would comply with the ordinance requiring city council approval for removing or changing benches.
Why are the changes being made?
At the meeting, the council removed a portion of funding that came from the violence prevention fund. That money would have been used for security on buses. But council member Ryana Parks-Shaw said the money would go further by continuing to fund the city’s violence prevention efforts.
That reduced the total amount of funding given by the city Thursday for KCATA buses and IRIS from nearly $16 million to about $13.3 million.
When the city approved giving more than $93 million in total to the KCATA in August, IRIS was not included in the contract and was not set to receive any of this week’s installment of funding.
The city has gone back and forth on what to do with IRIS, and almost ended the service in the spring before deciding to keep it running two days later. But there was one problem: The city hadn’t decided on a permanent funding source for the service, and it hadn’t paid zTrip, the company that runs IRIS, since May.
The ordinance passed by the city council Thursday gives more than $830,000 in backfunding to IRIS for service between May and December of this year. It’s also giving KCATA about $3.9 million to use exclusively for the rideshare.
That money for IRIS comes out of the budget increase that the KCATA was promised in its August contract and cannot be used for bus service. Because of that, KCATA has about $9.4 million to work with instead of the full amount, and told the city that it needed to cut service to meet that funding amount.
City council recommended that the KCATA use some of its reserves to make up the difference in funding.
Council members, especially in the Northland, argue that IRIS should be considered the same as bus service because it fills in the gaps for public transportation that buses do not provide. The cost for bus service with no cuts from the KCATA and Northland IRIS service together would be more than $18 million.
Council member Eric Bunch, who also represents Kansas City on the KCATA board of commissioners, said there is a disconnect between considering the two services equal and actually funding them.
“Philosophically, if you want to put them together, you have to put the dollars together, too,” Bunch said at a council committee meeting this week.
How did we get here?
Kansas City and the KCATA have had a tumultuous relationship for years. City officials have alleged that the agency’s service issues are due to financial mismanagement. The city covers nearly all of the KCATA’s overhead costs because other municipalities have ended bus service in their area.
Rising transit costs nationwide and a stagnant budget appropriation from Kansas City resulted in the KCATA threatening drastic service cuts to nearly half of its routes in March. The city raised its funding for KCATA to nearly $78 million in April to avoid cuts.
In August, the KCATA and Kansas City still had not signed a contract. The agency was operating without getting paid because its previous contract had expired at the end of April. Without a new contract and more money, the agency said it would again have to make drastic cuts or end service in the city altogether.
After last-minute negotiations, Kansas City and the KCATA signed a contract in mid-August that continued service without any cuts and planned to bring back fares for most riders. The contract, which included the nearly $78 million the city budgeted for the transit agency, promised to increase funding up to more than $93 million by the end of the year to avoid any cuts.
But that funding did not initially include IRIS. Because the city now wants the money to include the rideshare service, the KCATA said cuts are necessary.
What happens now?
Council members earlier this week expressed frustration with what they perceive to be a lack of communication between the city and the KCATA.
Council member Crispin Rea suggested a more structured, regular set of meetings between the council, city staff and the KCATA.
“We are constantly questioning, ‘What direction are we going? What are the actual numbers that we're looking at?’ It just seems like whiplash,” Rea said. “I can only imagine what that feels like to … riders who are trying to figure out where this whole thing leads.”
The city will unveil and begin gathering public input on its 2026-2027 budget in February. Council members urged the KCATA to provide them with more information sooner so that they have a better idea of what the transit agency’s needs are and what cuts may be required next year — instead of repeating this year’s saga.
Frank White III said he will serve out the remainder of his contract, which expires January 24. The KCATA board has appointed Chuck Ferguson as its interim CEO. Ferguson has been the agency's chief operating officer for three years and has worked at the KCATA for 11.
