Is more money coming for World Cup buses? KC transit leaders eye ticking clock
With World Cup matches in Kansas City about seven months off and no designated funding to boost local transit service in immediate view, the Kansas City Area Transportation Authority has begun the process of shifting around dollars within its budget to add some bus service next summer.
The move comes after 11 host cities for the men’s soccer tournament in the United States requested Congress fund around $400 million for transit improvements. As part of the funding request to lawmakers, transit agencies in the Kansas City metro at one point asked for around $12 million, said KCATA Chief Operations Officer Chuck Ferguson.
But Congress hasn’t advanced a bill to fund those requests, and as time has slipped away, KCATA’s wish list has shrunk for the event.
It’s become impossible to find buses to lease, and it’s difficult to recruit and train a large number of bus operators for a short-term job, Ferguson said. Lawmakers established more than $600 million in funding for safety and security purposes for the event, but that money won’t help with transit, he noted.
“I’m a lifelong Kansas City resident, born and raised here, so I’m definitely excited for the opportunity to host and put on a good face for the world, but yeah, I wish we had more identifiable funding and I wish it had been identified earlier,” he told The Star Thursday.
“We’ve been planning for this for quite some time,” he said. “It’s not the plans that have ever been in question; it’s the funding.”
Asked about transit funding for the event, U.S. Rep. Sharice Davids, D-Kansas, indicated in a statement provided to The Star that some funding was still possible.
“Kansas City has a huge opportunity to shine on the world stage, and I’m committed to making sure our region has the federal resources needed to be successful,” she said. “As co-chair of the bipartisan FIFA World Cup 2026 Caucus and a member of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, I’ve been working with colleagues on both sides of the aisle to identify every possible avenue for support — including through the upcoming appropriations process.”
For now, though, KCATA has begun the formal process of getting approval to shift around a pot of a little less than $3 million — made up of federal grant funds for other projects and local matching dollars — to boost operations during the weeks of the World Cup next summer. The agency is still hoping a “white knight” comes riding in with an additional $3-5 million to expand service during that time, Ferguson said.
Separate from any added service local transit agencies might provide, KC2026, the World Cup organizing committee in Kansas City, is expected to have a fleet of 200 buses that will be used to transport people around the metro. Details for how those buses will be used have not yet been announced.
Kansas City will host six total World Cup matches at Arrowhead Stadium — known for the event as “Kansas City Stadium.” Four group-stage games will take place in June and a pair of knockout-round matches will take place in July. Officials have said the event is expected to bring an estimated 650,000 visitors to Kansas City next summer.
How might KCATA bolster bus service?
KCATA is working through scenarios for how to add to service with what limited funding it does have, including by shortening bus intervals on east-west routes it operates and improving service that connects to the Kansas City Streetcar route, which runs north-south. With more service, perhaps instead of waiting 20 minutes in between buses, riders might wait 15 or 10 minutes, and service could run later into the evening, Ferguson said.
The agency is also eying plans to assist with what’s known as “crush loading” — when a swell of passengers wants to use transit all at once — around the FIFA Fan Festival at the National WWI Museum and Memorial campus. The free festival, which will show games on video boards, will have a capacity of 25,000 people.
Large numbers of people will likely end up leaving the event at the same time at the conclusion of games. While the Streetcar will be able to push large crowds away from the event, more buses could help to bolster that effort and keep crowds from building.
“What we want to do is be able to push them out there to waiting buses that can replicate the Streetcar route or KC2026 vehicles that may take people back to park and ride locations,” Ferguson said. “We are going to look at that as one of the priorities because, besides just a lot of people exiting at one time, that’s also a safety and security concern. We want to be prepared for that.”
KCATA did receive grant funding from Missouri that will establish a transit ambassador program that will have guides at stops with higher usage. Those workers will be able to point riders in the right direction and identify areas where more service is needed. KCATA hopes that service might last past the World Cup.
“They say very casually that this is a Super Bowl every time that you have a match day here,” Ferguson said. “That’s a lot of people, a lot of movement required. What it might end up showing is that we would be a stronger and more viable community if we had a higher level of transit options.”
