After 20 years of relying on the bus in Kansas City, Robert Hinton has his routes mapped out: the 35 to get to medical appointments at the veterans hospital. The 63 to pay his utility bills. The 31 to run errands. When things are close enough, he'll walk, like when he goes to Metro Lutheran Ministry once a month for food assistance.
As a disabled Army veteran who is on Medicare and relies on a social service agency, Hinton should qualify in multiple ways for functionally free bus fare. That’s the program that will continue to offer free fare for eligible riders after the Kansas City Area Transportation Authority starts charging fees for bus rides again in June.
But Hinton hasn’t heard anything about how the functionally free fare program will work, or who will give him a bus card. KCUR spoke to multiple social service agencies whose clients rely on buses, and they say they haven’t heard anything from officials about what functionally free fare will look like.
“Generally, as the passengers, we're the last to know,” Hinton said. “You think we would be the first to know, but that's the way we roll these days, I guess. Nobody cares about the person who has to spend the money. They only care about who's collecting money. That’s a problem.”
Kansas City was the first major city to eliminate bus fares in 2020. Doing so attracted new riders to the system and increased ridership to 12 million. But the KCATA and the city struggled over who should pay for zero fare, and drivers argued that the policy led to increased harassment.
Eventually, COVID funds that were used to subsidize free fares ran out, and zero-fare service was a casualty of the city council and KCATA’s budget disputes last year.
The KCATA and the city began discussing functionally free fare in early 2024, when they decided to keep zero fare during contract negotiations but warned its end may be coming.
In its 2026-27 budget, Kansas City has earmarked $165,000 for bus fare for its employees, but nothing for citywide fare subsidies. Mayor Quinton Lucas said he is still “a very strong advocate for free fares,” but wants more regional funding to maintain and maybe one day expand the limited system.
“It is not lost on me that under the prior free fare program, only the city of Kansas City paid into that system, yet the system was entirely free,” Lucas said. “Kansas City taxpayers pay mightily for this service in a way that no one else does. I think that if we believe in regionalism, for once, actually talking about public transit investment equitably across our region is a key part of it.”
The premise of the functionally free model is that low-income riders or those who receive aid from social service agencies won’t have to pay to ride. Officials have also mentioned that students, veterans, seniors and people with disabilities will have free fare.
When KCATA approved a $2 fare model in January, it said free fare for some would be included.
But since then, no plan has been solidified.
Becky Poitras is the vice president of Metro Lutheran Ministry, which helps people experiencing housing and food insecurity across the region. Poitras said no one at her nonprofit or at other peer agencies she’s spoken to has heard anything about what functionally free fare will look like.
Most of the people Metro Lutheran Ministry serves rely on public transportation. Until they know for sure what’s going on, Poitras said her agency is hesitant to tell clients about fares returning without being able to offer them a solution.
“It's frustrating, because people deserve the right to know what's going on surrounding the transportation that they rely on so much every single day,” Poitras said. “We don't want to be part of the wait-and-see attitude, but we also don't want to give people information without having the full story.”
Poitras said she’s worried a policy won’t be cemented until after fares come back, and that many of her clients will fall through the cracks in June.
The KCATA said a plan is in the works. But the agency can’t say when it will be implemented, or if it will be done in time to keep people who qualify for free fare from paying for the bus when the agency begins charging again in the summer.
Before zero fare was introduced in 2020, the agency had multiple passes that gave riders either a reduced rate or free fare. Students, veterans and those who received services from social service agencies were eligible for those. Agencies purchased passes at a discounted rate from the KCATA and then could offer them to their clients for free or at a reduced price.
Seniors, people with disabilities, people who are enrolled in a federal low-income system, and those with Medicare and Medicaid automatically get reduced fares as a condition of the KCATA’s federal funding.
AJ Farris, the director of planning and scheduling for the KCATA, said the transportation agency plans to reintroduce fare passes and is working to reestablish partnerships with agencies that collaborated with the KCATA before zero fare. But he said the agency is still so early in the process that it can’t say what those passes will be.
“There are people who are going to have a harder time with this return to a fare, and we want to understand who those populations are and what we can do to make that as seamless and easy as possible,” Farris said. “It just means that we have to get those partnerships started back up again.”
Farris said the KCATA couldn’t begin working on the functionally free system until it had its fare policy and related technology in place. The KCATA’s board of commissioners voted in January to approve a phased plan to introduce $2 fares and a technology vendor for them.
During phase one, when the agency begins charging fares in June, riders can use their credit or debit card to tap to pay, purchase pre-programmed tickets or use a mobile app to pay for fares.
But pass cards won’t be available until phase two of the KCATA’s fare reintroduction; Lucas and other city council members have urged the KCATA to use the city’s municipal IDs, called fountain cards, for the service. Farris said the KCATA isn’t “ready to commit to an exact date” for phase two of the plan, but said the goal is no later than the end of 2026.
Farris said the KCATA has begun to reach out to nonprofits, and whether they get access to free fare by June depends on how fast they can work together.
Poitras wants to figure this out quickly, but she said she still hasn’t heard anything concrete from the agency.
In 2019, before Kansas City implemented zero fare, Metro Lutheran Ministry partnered with the KCATA to buy fare cards at a reduced rate, which it then gave to clients to access transportation. Then COVID hit, and the bus agency shut down before reemerging with zero fare.
Poitras wants to reestablish that partnership, and maybe even repurpose the cards they didn’t use. But she said she hasn’t been able to establish a meeting with the bus agency about buying back into the pass system during phase two of the KCATA’s fare reintroduction plan — or what that means for the people she helps in the meantime.
“We're all kind of on pins and needles,” Poitras said. “We know the negative impact that full fare is going to have on those who have no income, or who have very little income and rely on free fare bus service to be able to get to the grocery store or to get to the food pantry, to get to where they need to pay their utility bills or access other supportive services.”
Farris said the KCATA is planning a widespread communication campaign to inform riders about the changes and will continue to reach out to nonprofits to establish free or reduced fare partnerships. Part of that plan includes town halls to speak to riders, though no date has been announced yet.
Until then, Hinton is still confused about how he’ll ride the bus starting this summer and who will provide him with the pass. He’s prepared to readjust his budget if a plan isn’t put in place in time, but that would mean going out less and walking farther to get to the streetcar, which isn’t run by the KCATA and will continue to be free.
Most of all, Hinton is mad that officials didn’t keep zero fare around long term, or at least until the functionally free program was better established.
“One year, you're going to ride for free, the next you're going to have to start paying,” Hinton said. “You (KCATA and city leaders) knew this was going to be a problem from the beginning. So why did you even start it? You gave people hope, and now you're taking it away.”
