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Transit Tangents
The Podcast where we discuss all things transit. Join us as we dive into transit systems across the US, bring you interviews with experts and advocates, and engage in some fun and exciting challenges along the way.
Transit Tangents
Kansas City - Transit Tour
Transit Tangents explores Kansas City's public transportation system in a day-long adventure testing buses, bikes, and the streetcar across both Kansas City, Missouri and Kansas City, Kansas. We discover a surprising transit network with remarkable architectural treasures and vibrant neighborhoods connected by a completely fare-free system.
• Kansas City operates the largest fare-free transit system in the United States, generating fair ridership but facing funding challenges
• Historic Union Station serves as a magnificent transit hub that narrowly escaped demolition in the city's past
• The Kansas City Streetcar shows consistently strong ridership even before its northern and southern extensions are completed
• MAX bus routes provide relatively reliable service at 20-minute frequencies, while other routes run much less frequently
• The city once had an extensive streetcar network until 1956, with the Country Club line now converted to a linear park
• Multiple areas along transit routes showcase impressive development, from the Spanish-inspired Plaza to the Brookside neighborhood
• Electric bikeshare provides a convenient alternative for short trips between transit routes
• Weather conditions dramatically impact the transit experience, particularly at bus stops with limited shelter
• Highway removal proposals for the North Loop present opportunities to reconnect downtown neighborhoods
• Transit infrastructure crosses state lines with KCATA serving both the Missouri and Kansas sides of the metropolitan area
If you like this episode, please make sure to like and subscribe. Support us on Patreon to catch episodes early and access additional content.
Doors are closing.
Speaker 2:Public transit. That's my way to roll On the metro. I'm taking control.
Speaker 1:Bus stops, train tracks it's my daily grind. Transit, it's the rhythm of my life. This week on Transit Tangents is our last episode from our spring trip to Kansas City. Kansas City in a day using only public transit, From the buses to the street, car and even the bike share system. We put Kansas City's public transit to the test. All of this and more coming up on Transit Tangents. Alright, we are in downtown Kansas City doing Kansas City in a day using only public transit.
Speaker 3:Which Kansas City Louis.
Speaker 1:We're in Kansas City, missouri, which, after last night's happy hour, sounds like it is the right Kansas City to be in, but I don't know Kansas is great.
Speaker 2:It is an amazing place to be. All right, we're trying to start drama.
Speaker 1:I may be trying to start drama, but a lot of people were not saying that last night, so we'll see. We're going to go check it out later. We're about to hop on the streetcar. We're joined by a special guest today, Josh, who lives here in Kansas City. The streetcar is about to pull up right now, though, so we're going to head over to Union Station and we will catch everybody there as you're watching. If you're enjoying the video, please hit the like button and consider leaving a comment. You can also subscribe to see more content like this from other cities.
Speaker 2:Oh beautiful.
Speaker 3:Yeah, this is awesome. As you can see, we are in this beautiful building. Josh, tell us where we are.
Speaker 2:So this is Union Station. This is a 1914, I want to say construction. It was the replacement for the Union Depot down in the West Bottoms and came after a flood came through. So all the railroads came together and built this train station and it was a major passenger rail and freight rail hub for the entire country.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and it's absolutely beautiful. You walk in and it's just like oh my God, like I wish we had more of this still around.
Speaker 3:It's depressing to think that we lost all of this.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely. I mean, in some conversations last night with folks, it sounds like we almost lost this too at a certain point. I mean there's some images and if you're watching we'll put it up where. I mean the building was in such bad shape that I mean there were pieces of the ceiling falling in. They actually had to install like a dome for folks to be able to walk through, to be able to board trains, which is yeah, and you would board outside of this building and not even wait in here at some point.
Speaker 2:It got so bad.
Speaker 3:Compare this to Dallas' Union Station.
Speaker 1:Or Austin's Amtrak Station. Oh, Austin's Amtrak Station is beautiful. We have a little Amshack.
Speaker 3:Don't make fun of our Amshack.
Speaker 1:What's really exciting, and a big reason why we're in Kansas City, is right now you all are working on your streetcar extension. On this Patreon member supported trip to Kansas City, we had a chance to actually meet with the Kansas City streetcar team to learn more about the planning for the streetcar extension and get a behind the scenes look at their maintenance facility linked in the description. While we were still with Josh, we wanted to ask him about some of the history behind the streetcars in Kansas City.
Speaker 2:So Kansas City had an extensive electrified streetcar network that was really built out in the late or in the early 1900s as the city was sort of booming and growing. And you know, they sort of ended service in 1956 I think was the last year the country Club line ran and there were a number of challenges with streetcar service. And the streetcars in Kansas City were sort of privately owned for a very long time and built alongside sort of speculative real estate development and they were, you know, developers would build them and operate the streetcars and so I think you had multiple competing you know operators for some period of time and then they all consolidated and were put under the Kansas City Public Service Company and so the heir to that was the Kansas City Area Transportation Authority. That was created in the late 60s, early 70s, through a bi-state compact.
Speaker 2:But yeah, streetcars have a long history here. We had several, several routes. All of them converged downtown in just a really messy grid, and part of their downfall too was, you know, automobiles becoming more and more popular and downtown getting crowded and congested. They all ran in mixed. Traffic Wasn't a problem in 1905, but it became a big problem in 1930, 40, and 50.
Speaker 1:While Chris eats his popcorn. From here we're gonna head over to the World War I Memorial, which is kind of right across the street here, and then eventually we're gonna hop on the bus, because the streetcar doesn't extend there, and head a little bit further south into Kansas City, if you're in Kansas City, you may notice this really tall obelisk-like structure.
Speaker 3:This is the National World War I Museum, originally opened in 1926 as the Liberty Memorial or Liberty Museum, and then in 2004, it was designated by the US Congress as the nation's World War I Museum and Memorial.
Speaker 1:So we just wrapped up here at Union Station and the World War I Memorial. We're getting ready to hop on one of the MAX buses here, the M-MAX, and it's going to take us headed south. It runs kind of alongside where the streetcar will extend eventually not right on it, very likely due to construction and whatnot happening. I would imagine that this route is probably going to be reconfigured once the streetcar extension is opened. But we're going to be taking this down to the plaza area. And an interesting thing is a group called Urban Labs that we're also speaking to on this trip and there'll be an episode about actually made a proposal to pedestrianize this area. It has not been pedestrianized yet, but we'll be sure to talk about that when we speak with Urban Labs. So right now the bus says it'll be here in about five or six more minutes. This bus runs every 20 minutes. I believe it's more frequent during rush hour, but right now it's about 10 45 in the morning. So 20 minute frequencies is what we've got.
Speaker 3:Thank you Sorry.
Speaker 1:The Cheesecake Factory is right on the Max line, so I think city nerd would likely approve of the location very transit oriented cheesecake factory, similar to in houston. We had a transit oriented cheesecake factory in houston too. All right, so we made it to the plaza area. Uh, again, we heard a lot about this last night and, uh, one of the interesting things that they had mentioned was the person who designed this had been on a trip to Spain and took the inspiration from that trip, and it is very apparent here, as you're walking around, we're not getting very Midwest-y vibes, we're getting very European vibes.
Speaker 3:No, this person went to Spain and said, oh, I really miss that really walkable city that I was in. You know what.
Speaker 1:We should recreate it and add a shit ton of parking yes, so this, this was created, opened in 1923 and it's considered to be the first or one of the first kind of suburban shopping centers in the united states. Um, yeah, a lot of the parking is kind of hidden around.
Speaker 3:It's a really beautiful area and our kansas city is known for, I think, a lot of its architecture, a lot of Art Deco and this is definitely not Art Deco, very Spanish, but it's really pretty and it may not fit in with the rest of the city, but the street grid is pretty well integrated with the surrounding neighborhoods, yeah, and there's a lot of development around this. Yes, so, even though it may be a little bit of a mismatch, it feels really comfortable just walking around it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I mean to be clear. It's basically it is a mall. It'd be nicer to have some more local shops here. I'm sure there are some mixed in, but it's just like funny.
Speaker 3:You have like the nicest looking cheesecake factory anywhere with this like ornate fountain and lots of other shops you'd see in a mall, but there's a ton of parking. It's now mostly hidden.
Speaker 1:Yeah, either above or below ground, ground but, yeah, interested to see the future of this, though, and if Urban Labs and the City of Kansas City are able to pedestrianize at least a portion of this, I think that'd be a huge win. You may have noticed when we were getting on and off the bus and streetcar, and you will notice throughout the day, that we haven't been tapping our phones or using an app or anything like that, and that's because Kansas City's transit is actually fare free, yep.
Speaker 3:It is the largest US city with a free transit system.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and that is great in a lot of ways and also presents some challenges. Later in the day we'll kind of talk about some of the budget issues happening in Kansas City at the moment as far as their transit goes. But when you're having budget issues at the same time as not collecting fares, it's a tricky thing and there's a lot of arguments for and against this. One of the arguments for continuing to keep it fare-free is that the cost of implementing a fare system actually eats away at some of it, although, while I do think there is a cost associated there having some revenue to play with, there might be higher upfront cost to set it up initially. Again, yeah, but that's going to go down over time. You'll mostly pay off that cost over time.
Speaker 3:What was also really nice to see on the bus that we took from Union Station to the plaza is that the bus was pretty full, right, a lot of riders and I guess the best way to say this a diverse ridership. Yeah, it's the only people from all different places in KC were really riding this bus to get across town, so it's good to see that.
Speaker 1:Totally, and I think whether you are fare-free or not, especially if you put in subsidies for folks who need the help, I don't know that it's going to affect ridership necessarily. I personally am of the mindset that I would rather see more service at a cost, and me receiving good service for that cost, than having it be free and kind of constantly under potential threat. Right now, as the system here is, of having service be reduced and it's it's hard because you can't necessarily like, oh, you're reducing service, but like what do you expect it's free can be an easy mentality to fall into here. So when filming this in early March, kc ATA was under threat of needing to cut service due to budget constraints. Unfortunately, it seems as if those cuts are underway. We may get into this further in a future episode, but for now we have linked more information in the description of this video.
Speaker 3:It's a really beautiful area. I think what would make this a really cool neighborhood would be if the second floors or even third floors of these buildings were Residences a little more lively yeah you've never seen a photo to child that looks like that.
Speaker 3:Wild we just walked around the plaza area very nice. Wild, we just walked around the plaza area very nice. We're going to hop over to the Nelson Atkins Museum of Art, which is a famous art museum here in Kansas City. We're going to get there by jumping on the bikes and then heading over toward the university. If you're in KC and you want to use the bike, there is an app called Ride KC Bike. You download this. It will tell you where the bike stations are and how many bikes are there. The really cool thing about the KC Bike you download this. It will tell you where the bike stations are and how many bikes are there. The really cool thing about the KC bikes is that these are all electric. So I have found one. I am going to hit scan. Scan it there Gives me the trip options. It allows me to unlock for $1 and then 25 cents per minute.
Speaker 1:Interesting system where, instead of having a dock, these locks are mechanical and when you unlock it it just unlocks this back wheel. Here it's like a round kind of clip that goes in and locks it and then you'll just lock it again to one of these stations again in the future. Yes, no bike lane right here, which is unfortunate, but it looks like there's a nice trail off to our left here that it's probably like kind of the destination of this. We talked to some folks or I talked to some folks yesterday at the bar who said that the city is improving some of their bike infrastructure. There are a couple of nice routes but still plenty of work to do. Pleasant surprise here, always nice when you accidentally bump into some nice bike infrastructure.
Speaker 3:We're getting off of it right away, though I am really impressed with sort of the build out of Kansas City. I mean, the apartment buildings we rode by are almost like Chicago.
Speaker 1:Even some new development along the bus that we were taking is hard to show because the bus was really crowded so I wasn't able to point out the window. But yeah, I think.
Speaker 3:I've been sleeping on Kansas City. It's a Kansas City. This is probably colder than our scooter ride in Salt Lake City. Yes, yes it is. We're on the bikes from the art museum it's a very chilly ride over to the University of Missouri, Kansas City. This is a research university that was founded in 1933 and currently has a student population of about 15,300.
Speaker 1:And what's really nice is the current streetcar extension is going to end right here. Yeah, pretty far south and like this isn't the best view over this building by the field house, but like there's a lot of development off campus that's kind of in the direction of the plaza area we were at earlier. I mean, this is this is a dense part of town and it shows in the ridership of the bus that we were on. It absolutely does, yeah, and it also really bodes well for the streetcar. Yep, I think it'll be a pretty well used line.
Speaker 1:Yes, so this is the Southern terminus of the streetcar extension. They have been testing streetcars on this even while we've been here. Basically, it looks ready to roll and will be opening later this year, which is really exciting. Obviously, we've talked about the university being right here. There's also definitely some new development that's happened, very likely spurred from this. You've got a grocery store with apartments and whatnot. On top of it there's also a parking garage and some open space that I'm sure is being held right now and could very easily be redeveloped in the future, with the streetcar coming right to potential front doors of folks here. So exciting to see it.
Speaker 3:So we walked from the southern terminus of the new extension of the streetcar down a trail that is actually a historic streetcar line. It's really cool. It's like a linear park and trail system that continues on into South Kansas City. We stopped here at the Country Club station. It's a historic station spot. I thought there was like a little gazebo. There's just a placard, but it's so cool to see where the, the old stop, used to be.
Speaker 1:Right now we're waiting to get back on the main Max bus. We're going to head south towards the Brookside neighborhood. We were coming down here and I was like we need to hurry up and cross the street. We'll record talking about the little station from over here, because there was a bus in what is now probably five minutes and then the next one's not for like almost half an hour and it's too cold to sit around and wait for half an hour.
Speaker 3:So it's a little chilly.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah. So fingers crossed that we'll get a bus here. In a couple of minutes We'll be down in the Brookside neighborhood. We might pop in somewhere and get a little coffee and we will update you from there.
Speaker 2:Hello Woo.
Speaker 3:Hello. She's on schedule. She's on schedule.
Speaker 1:We just left out. That was a very I'm glad we caught the bus because we would have been sitting there for at least 20 minutes waiting for the next one. But super fast to get here. Yeah, it does speed things up when no one has to sit there and tap and fiddle with to get here. Yeah, it does speed things up when no one has to like sit there and tap and fiddle with money. I will say it does. That is the perk of the no-fare system. It's no-fare All right.
Speaker 3:There's no reason to go to Europe. You can just go to Kansas City and experience Seville, spain or Tudor England.
Speaker 1:Yes, you love to see a place have their own little branded bike racks. This is like a little mini neighborhood, like downtown center in a neighborhood, like a neighborhood center, town center kind of thing.
Speaker 1:Yes, and it's like what is lacking in so many like areas outside of downtowns in the US, everywhere, like we have all these sprawling suburbs with nothing that looks like this. We have instead giant walmarts with super huge parking lots that then lead to more giant big box stores, and here's a neighborhood with wide sidewalks, and I mean street parking, sure, but wide sidewalks and some sidewalk cafe spaces, right?
Speaker 3:um, it's really nice, yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 1:Uh, from here we're gonna kind of walking to the east right now down 63rd street. Um, we're gonna catch a bus back north, uh, towards kansas city. Um, there is a bus that runs east west on the 63rd street. That is kind of just a cross-town route. It is only hourly, though we missed the hourly one by a few minutes. We're not going to stand here waiting for an hour, so instead we're going to walk a mile and we're hopefully going to then catch the 25 bus, which is an every half an hour route.
Speaker 1:If Chris and I walk fast, which we're known to walk fast we'll be able to catch it. So this would be our first bus. That is not one of the max routes. The max routes generally run a little bit more frequently, so we're going to walk a little bit quick here and hopefully catch this bus on time. We're not running for buses today. They wanted to make us run. We were like nah, the bus is pulling up right now, while we have a second here Very nice bus stop. One of the other Max buses stops here, but this will be our first non-Max bus experience.
Speaker 1:We're getting on the 25. Which is right there. Sorry, how are you? We're currently in the 18th and Vine neighborhood. One thing I want to point about the 25 bus, before we talk about where we are, is the bus stopped at time points quite a few times along the line because we were getting ahead of schedule. There's not much traffic that we've encountered here in general, and we did stop at a lot of those time points and wait for a few minutes, and I think that's really important when you have a bus network like here in Kansas City, that isn't as frequent as you would like it to be, because if someone is looking at their phone to see the schedule and then they're like, okay, I need to be there at this time, it's not like the bus was early and just blew by and now they're stuck waiting there for another half an hour. So we saw a few people showing up right on time and catching it because of uh that, uh little gap in the time uh, being left there.
Speaker 1:The 18th and vine neighborhood is a great spot to go to learn more about kansas city's history, in particular, when it comes to jazz, baseball and black culture, all in one neighborhood. It's home to the negro leagues baseball museum, the jazz museum and the legacy of legends like satchel page and charlie parker.
Speaker 1:Our, our timing luck has finally run out a little bit yeah this is not too bad, but, uh, we've been kind of killing time already here. We still have probably another seven or eight minutes, but about a 15 minute ish. Wait, uh, for the 18 bus which we are going to pop on to get to back in downtown kansas city, missouri, and we're going to transfer on to either the 101 or 106 to then go the rest of the way over to Kansas City, kansas. Yeah yeah, we'll see you in Kansas, though You're not in Kansas anymore, toto. I'm not in Kansas yet, toto, right.
Speaker 3:I guess on the way back.
Speaker 1:I should have said that back. I should have said that we made it downtown and got off our bus to transfer onto the 101, which would take us into Kansas City, kansas. Despite the wait earlier for the 25, the 101 was only a three-minute wait before we were on our way to Kansas City, kansas.
Speaker 3:So we couldn't come to the area without with only seeing one KC. So now we are at KCK, yes, which is Kansas City, kansas.
Speaker 1:Not as much going on A little quieter.
Speaker 3:It's also very cold and raining and yeah yeah, we're not going to spend a whole lot of time here.
Speaker 1:A little yucky, I'll try to get a couple visuals for you, but we're also trying to spend a whole lot of time here. A little yucky, I'll try to get a couple visuals for you, but we're also trying to keep things a little dry in the camera department. Yeah, I'm glad we made it over here. Interesting to point out, though, that the KCATA does operate on both sides of the border here, so that's not something you see every day, necessarily, that the same transit agency crosses state lines, but in this case it makes a lot of sense that it does so.
Speaker 3:Um, yeah, even transit agencies around new york. It's rare that they really operate too far into the other district, so it's cool to see it here.
Speaker 1:Yep, um, cool. Well, with that, we're going to try to catch again either the 101 or 106 back over to kansas city. Um, we're going to go warm up for a little bit once we get over there and then we're going to continue on our journey to go see where the North Street car extension is going, as well as an area where there's a proposed highway removal. It's still it's not in the like phase where it's going to happen yet, but there is some grassroots conversations about making it happen. Personally, would love to see it.
Speaker 3:Very cold.
Speaker 1:So cold, it's so cold. We're at a transit tangents all time low Literally.
Speaker 3:The wind chill is 21 degrees right now and it's like 30 mile per hour, winds and raining. We're very lost for a while, yeah.
Speaker 1:All right, we're back at it with warmer clothes.
Speaker 3:We're in slightly better shape right now.
Speaker 1:Yes, we had to go back to the hotel and warm up for a little bit.
Speaker 3:The temperature has dropped from around 65 degrees this morning to around 39 or 40, and the wind chill is about 20 to 17 degrees.
Speaker 1:Yes, not great. We didn't have a lot to show you. But we struggled kind of getting back from the Kansas side of Kansas City. The buses it was an intersection where there were bus stops everywhere. It was really confusing which one to get to. We had to ask a bus driver or a random person. Eventually we figured out a bus. It was like another 10 minutes we're sitting there waiting in the cold and wind. Then it seemed like the bus wasn't going to show up. Yeah, it disappeared on the map. We almost gave up. I had Uber pulled up just in case, yes, and I was like no, no, no, like we're gonna be transit tangents tough, we almost didn't, we almost weren't.
Speaker 3:Louis says transit tangent's tougher than me.
Speaker 1:Yes, it did show up and we did make it back here, so we're not gonna catch the streetcar, though, to the river market area and we'll pick it up from there. Before checking out River Market, we wanted to catch a glimpse of the northern extension to the Kansas City streetcar. Despite the weather, we walked up onto a bridge and took a look. All right, it's pretty miserable out, but we walked across this highway bridge to show you the streetcar line. You can see some of the tracks are already down. Some of them are still being laid.
Speaker 1:There's a lot of new development all the way along here, which is great to see, and this is the northern extension. At the far end of this is the soccer stadium, so you've got the women's soccer stadium, lots of new development, and all of this will funnel into the existing line downtown and then go way south to where we were earlier in the day at the University. We're really putting ourselves out here in the cold to bring you this and if you think us standing on this bridge to bring you and show you exactly what's going on here is worth it to you, if you want to throw five bucks on our Patreon, we would very much appreciate it. If you haven't liked this video or subscribed. Those are both also great ways to help support the show.
Speaker 3:So after checking out the extension of the Kansas City streetcar, we walked back over to City Market. This is a really awesome area. On the weekends it's full of vendors, produce markets and it's sort of surrounded by all of these little restaurants, coffee shops and other really cool shops. The City Market dates back to around 1857 and was one of the original sites of Kansas City, so really cool historic place to check out.
Speaker 1:While we were on the streetcar on the way over here we actually crossed over the North Loop section of the highway. So if you look at a map of Kansas City, there's a ton of highways all around it and famously there is kind of a square around the downtown area that really breaks it up from the rest. And when you look at old historical satellite view of the area it is insane what was demolished to build these highways to begin with. Some of the locals here shared with us that there was this really cool survey done in the 1940s where every single property in all of Kansas City had its photo taken in 1940 with a man standing in front with a numbered sign on it. And you can actually go today and look at a map and click around and see what used to be in some of these areas, including where the highways used to be.
Speaker 1:Unfortunately, now obviously you have the highway there, there's quite a bit of surface parking all around the existing highways, so the downtown fabric kind of breaks up as you cross these areas, which is common in so many cities. But what is really exciting about here is there are some proposals to actually remove the North Loop section of the highway. We'll kind of put links to some of that information so that if you are interested you can go ahead and check it out. But another potential highway removal project we've talked about some successful highway removal projects as well as some other planned ones and other episodes in the past that we'll link below if you want to check those out. It's been a journey today a bit of a very, very cold Kansas City in a day using only public started out 60 something degrees, it's now like close to 30 and the windchill is around 15 ish it's cold.
Speaker 1:It's cold. I was saying that my hands feel fine, but it's because I can't feel them anymore. We've had a really nice time in Kansas City in general. We had a really warm welcome with a happy hour event and everything. So thank you to everyone who came out to that event and gave us a lot of ideas to do today Way too many ideas, frankly, because it's impossible to hit everything in a day. I think overall, we were pretty surprised at how big Kansas City was.
Speaker 3:I'm very surprised at the size of Kansas City, at the density of a lot of the neighborhoods, at the beauty of a lot of the architecture Like seeing the Union Station was amazing that was a highlight, for sure.
Speaker 1:Yeah, like early in the day, but I also think I got slowly jaded throughout the day as to how cold it was.
Speaker 3:I got my popcorn. It was awesome. Yes, I started the day full of hope.
Speaker 1:Yes, as far as the transit goes, I mean we got lucky, I will say. For the first half of the day the max buses seem like those actually run a pretty good service. We were seeing them at 20-ish minute frequencies which I'm being generous with the word good there in the morning and in the evening it seems like they run at slightly higher frequencies than that, but in general those seem like the more reliable lines. Yep, the additional buses after that start to become a little bit more of a crapshoot when you're talking every half an hour, every 45 minutes or every hour long.
Speaker 3:Yeah, coming back from 18th and vine, we had a longer wait than we anticipated for that bus and then, um, what really sort of took a turn was when we decided to venture into kansas city. Kansas mistake. Everyone in missouri told us not to go.
Speaker 1:Yeah, um, but we had to check actually did we had to check out the other kansas city.
Speaker 3:Uh, and then that was when the weather also took a turn and we got stranded for a minute. The signage very confusing it was raining harder, it was windier.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we were tired. Uh, couldn't quite figure out which bus stop was where. We almost called it quits. We powered through. Um, that was definitely a challenge and the thing is, is that experience very likely happens to people quite a bit?
Speaker 1:yeah, probably not uncommon in kansas city. Yeah, I mean it's. We're not in a warm climate In the wintertime you are gonna, when you're dealing with buses, every half an hour you get one bus that's canceled or one bus that's delayed for too long. You are standing in the freezing cold wind at many bus stops that don't always have a shelter. Maybe do kinda sorta have a shelter and you can stand behind to protect yourself from the wind, but frankly, like that sucks, like it's not fun. So, work to be done and unfortunately, you know we we explained a little bit earlier on about the funding cuts and whatnot that are coming to kcata and those frequencies are not, unfortunately, going to be improving anytime soon yeah, so hopefully, uh, the city can figure out a way to keep those funded, or at least maybe we can bring those back, maybe they can introduce a fared structure.
Speaker 3:We'll see, because all in all, I think our experiences in Kansas City were pretty positive. Again, a couple of issues here and there, but for the most part we got around fine.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I will say, like the streetcar, two thumbs up. I mean yeah, so it's. It's weird because it's so short. I kind of came into this assuming it's like a novelty thing and no one was going to be using it. But even at its short length right now, before the extensions, there's been people on it. There's been people on it every single time and quite a few people on it.
Speaker 3:It has good ridership, it does get you across town quickly and pretty efficiently, and when it finally extends from the soccer stadium all the way to UMKC it's going to be a really valuable asset to the city and I think it's going to get a lot more usage.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I mean we're seeing a lot of development along those extensions as well, which is also going to boost with ridership and help with ridership and hopefully can you know when those extensions open it also may relieve some pressure from the bus system so that the funding can be, you know, kind of allocated where it needs to be, because for kc streetcar and the buses are in are different systems that work really well together but are independent of each other. So different funding mechanisms, yeah, um yeah.
Speaker 3:So, with all being said, I think we're going to wrap it up so we can catch the trolley that, or the streetcar that I think is about to come around the corner, and to get dinner and try out some kc barbecue. If you like this episode, please make sure to like and subscribe.
Speaker 1:Also, if you want to support us, we have our patreon where you can catch episodes early and additional content, uh, but with all that being said, thank you all so much for watching this episode from kansas city and enjoy the rest of your transit tangents tuesday.