Why so much road work on Kansas City’s Main St.? And when will it end? Here’s a guide
If you’ve driven down Main Street through Midtown lately, you might think the 3.5-mile streetcar extension is already under construction. Between Union Station and the Country Club Plaza, drivers have to change lanes again and again to avoid closures and cones.
But the work underway is only one step in preparing for the actual streetcar construction.
You can expect Main Street to be torn up one way or another for years to come.
Kansas City in January reached a funding agreement so that the federal government will pay for about half of the $351 streetcar extension, which will run from Union Station to 51st Street and Brookside Boulevard, at the doorstep of the University of Missouri-Kansas City.
The rest of the funds will come from a voter-approved Transportation Development District, which levies a special tax on properties around the streetcar line.
City Council members voted on Thursday to authorize the city to issue bonds to pay for finalized design, some new streetcars and some staffing.
Construction on the line itself is expected to start later this year or early next year. Officials expect the first streetcars to run on the extension in 2025.
But first, the city’s Water Department and private utilities have to make upgrades or move utility lines below the street’s surface to make room for the tracks.
Here’s a guide to the construction:
Construction now
From north to south, here’s why Main Street is torn up:
In the middle of Main Street, between Grand Boulevard and Warwick Trafficway, crews are replacing water mains. That’s expected to take three or four weeks, according to the Water Department’s newsletter.
Just south of 31st Street and Main, Spire is working to relocate its utility lines.
At Armour Boulevard, northbound traffic is reduced because AT&T crews are relocating utilities. AT&T is also working at 45th and Main, reducing traffic in both directions and closing the Art Museum bus stop, which has been temporarily relocated half a block north.
And crews are updating water mains on the west side of Main between 45th and 46th streets, reducing lanes of traffic.
Evergy is working on the north side of Emanuel Cleaver II Boulevard nearby, moving the 47th Street bus stop to 46th Terrace and Mill Creek Parkway.
While the myriad projects on Main are some of the first disruptions brought on by the streetcar extension, there’s more to come. The Water Department’s efforts alone began in January and won’t be done until early 2022.
But importantly, the Kansas City Streetcar Authority has pledged that construction will never fully close Main Street.
The next few years
Construction on the streetcar extension tracks won’t begin for months. The Streetcar Authority’s spokeswoman, Donna Mandelbaum, said the city would likely authorize bonds to finance the project this spring or summer.
For that reason, there’s no detailed construction schedule just yet.
But she said construction of the extension would likely overlap somewhat with utility work. And crews will work on both northbound and southbound tracks, starting at Union Station and working their way south. For most of the route, streetcars will run in the outside lanes of traffic until they cross Brush Creek and end near UMKC.
“One option was we do all northbound first and then come back and do all southbound, but then it would feel to the public that the road was open twice,” she said.
There are some time constraints. Mandelbaum said crews will need to be finished with construction in the Union Station area before the city hosts the NFL Draft in April 2023.
Now that the city has been through one streetcar construction process — for the 2.2 miles from Union Station to the River Market — Mandelbaum said the authority had more information it could share with people about how the project would affect them. And crews will do what they can to avoid cutting off access to businesses, a common complaint during construction of the original route.
“I think because we’ve gone through it before … maybe it will be less of a headache because they know what to expect,” Mandelbaum said.
The streetcar has also been awarded a federal grant for an extension running from River Market to Berkeley Riverfront Park, but it’s not clear when construction might start.
