Even after reinstating fares, the Kansas City Area Transportation Authority (KCATA) is warning of route reductions because the agency says city funding will fall short of maintaining current service levels. KCATA estimates it needs more than $100 million to preserve existing operations, well above the city’s proposed contribution.

The immediate concern is fewer routes and longer waits for riders. But the larger issue is institutional: KCATA is confronting the long-term consequences of policy decisions that weakened its financial position and eroded confidence among regional partners.

Those problems did not emerge overnight. For years, KCATA relied on temporary funding, emergency appropriations, and optimistic revenue assumptions. Pandemic-era federal aid masked those weaknesses but did not resolve the structural imbalance between operating costs and recurring revenue.

The clearest example was KCATA’s heavily promoted fare-free transit initiative. Supporters argued eliminating fares would improve mobility and reduce barriers for low-income riders. But even at the time, research and the experience of other cities suggested the policy was financially unsustainable.

Fare-free transit eliminated one of the system’s few direct revenue streams while increasing dependence on taxpayer subsidies. Transit fares rarely cover operating costs, but they still provide revenue and impose some fiscal discipline. When federal pandemic aid expired, KCATA faced familiar financial pressures with even fewer tools available to address them.

Acknowledging that reality, KCATA recently announced fares will return next month. Restoring fares amounts to an acknowledgment that the model was not sustainable.

The consequences extend beyond Kansas City itself. Regional transit systems depend on trust among local governments—trust that erodes when the central agency faces recurring fiscal problems.

Some regional governments have already moved to retain greater operational control over their own transit services. In 2022, Johnson County, Kansas, ended KCATA management oversight of its transit operations while continuing limited coordination through the RideKC brand. More recently, several suburban municipalities—including Gladstone, Grandview, and Raytown—have reduced or ended participation in RideKC service.

Obviously, public transit serves a purpose. Many Kansas City residents still rely on buses to reach work, school, and appointments. Like transit agencies nationwide, KCATA is operating in a difficult post-pandemic environment shaped by inflation, labor shortages and changing ridership patterns.

But those challenges make competent governance more important, not less. Municipalities are hesitant to rely on an agency caught in recurring fiscal crises driven by its own policy failures. Fare-free transit generated national attention, but reality eventually intervened.

KCATA’s budget problems are not simply the result of this year’s funding gap. They are the cumulative consequence of years of policy decisions that weakened the authority’s financial position and damaged its credibility.

The post KCATA Is Still Paying for the Fare-Free Experiment appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Kansas City’s new Bus Riders Union says city hall and the Kansas City Area Transportation Authority (KCATA) need to listen to riders.

On that point, it is right.

For years, KCATA has made major policy decisions without clearly anchoring them to what riders consistently say they value most. The most consequential example was the move to eliminate fares.

In late 2019, the Kansas City Council voted to subsidize fare-free bus trips tied to city service. In March 2020, as a COVID-era public health measure, fares were suspended regionally across RideKC partners. The pandemic decision effectively made the fare-free policy far broader than the original city-centered framing.

But fare-free did not make bus operations cheaper.

Before 2020, several Missouri-side municipal contracts operated under a net operating cost model: KCATA calculated operating costs, subtracted passenger revenue, and allocated the remaining loss among funding partners. In the year before fares were suspended, passenger revenue covered roughly $9 million of operating costs.

The fare-free policy eliminated that recurring revenue stream, but it did not eliminate operating costs. Fare-collection expenses declined modestly, but those savings were far smaller than the forgone revenue, and additional pressures—including ADA complementary paratransit demand—complicated the balance sheet.

During the pandemic, federal funds offset the lost fare revenue. But as one-time COVID-era funding dwindled, the structural question reemerged: who permanently pays for free fares and full service?

Multiple forces drove the budget stress that followed—expiring federal relief, post-pandemic inflation, and negotiated cost-sharing changes. Fare-free was not the only cause of rising costs, but it was a significant one.

Removing a revenue stream embedded in cost-allocation formulas increased the amount that had to be covered by subsidies. Without a dedicated replacement source, the system became more financially fragile. That coincided with contract disputes, service cut threats, and regional withdrawals—all of which riders experience as instability.

Just as important, fare-free did little to address passenger concerns. It did not fix whether the bus shows up on time or is clean and safe. It may have worsened these issues.

Research across major transit systems shows a similar pattern: riders tend to rank frequency, reliability, and safety above fare reductions as the changes most likely to increase their use.

Kansas City has tested fare-free transit. It proved impossible to sustain without stable, dedicated funding, making the service less attractive to other neighboring municipalities.

If the Bus Riders Union wants to ensure riders are heard, the focus now should be on what riders consistently say they need: buses that run frequently, arrive on time, and feel safe.

Unfortunately, KCATA’s past policy missteps have made this more difficult.

The post Kansas City’s Bus Riders Union Is Right about One Thing appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Then there’s Kansas City. The regional transit authority eliminated fares in 2020, but it did not go exactly as local leaders had hoped.

“We just never found a sustainable funding source to replace the $10 million a year out of the fare box,” said Eric Bunch, a city councilman in Kansas City, Mo., and a board member of the Kansas City Area Transportation Authority.

Rose also included perspectives from urban transit researchers, who note that reducing fares is less critical than improving service speed, frequency, and reliability.

For KCUR’s audience, Rose’s framing may have come as a surprise. While the station occasionally raised funding concerns, it largely avoided discussing how fare elimination could affect service.

In late 2019, a KCUR piece quoted then-Councilwoman Kathryn Shields, who lead the council’s finance committee, as pointing out that no one was addressing how to offset losses at the farebox. Instead, KCUR’s early coverage framed zero fare as a breakthrough, not a policy gamble — quoting advocates and then-KCATA leader Robbie Makinen extensively while declining to examine the underlying “research” he invoked.

None of the KCUR reporting during the debate seriously contended with the service impact of zero fare. None sought out urban transit researchers, as Rose did. None considered the so-called research that Makinen cited in support of the policy. KCUR’s framing heavily favored advocates—including an exceedingly fawning piece on Makinen himself—and did not interrogate claimed benefits.

In May, 2021, KCUR quoted Makinen as saying, “When [zero fare] started, everyone said it wouldn’t work, I believe we’ve proved them wrong.” His confidence was premature.

Early in the debate, research, ridership surveys, and national reporting—some of which I cited in a January 2020 Kansas City Star column—already pointed to the risks of fare-free transit.

KCUR’s most direct acknowledgment of fare-free drawbacks came belatedly, in 2022, when it reprinted a story from The Beacon on unreliable service and long waits faced by bus riders. KCUR’s own reporters only asked, “Should Kansas City Keep Buses Free?” in 2023 when the damage was evident.

Back in that December 2019 piece, KCUR quoted then-Councilman Kevin McManus as saying, “When we take the fareboxes away, nobody wants to be on this council putting them back.” Six years later, six of the 13 council members who voted to remove fares in 2019 voted to reinstate them in 2025.

KCUR deserves credit for eventually publishing more substantive fare-free coverage. But had this level of scrutiny come earlier—before the rise in operator assaults, service cuts, and staffing concerns—the public conversation might have been far more informed. Policymakers might have avoided their embarrassing reversals. And the harmful impact to those who depend on public transit might have been reduced, or avoided altogether.

The post KCUR Finally Confronts the Reality of Fare-Free Transit appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

People don’t appreciate things that are free, for good reason. One of the most famous insults in film history is on point here, when Rodney Dangerfield notices Ted Knight’s ugly golf hat in “Caddyshack” and says, “I bet you get a free bowl of soup with that hat.”

The Kansas City Area Transportation Authority (KCATA) didn’t give out free soup to riders when it made all transit free in 2020, but it might as well have. Free transit is great if your goal is to turn buses into mobile homeless shelters. If your goal is to provide quality, safe, affordable transit, then making it free is the last thing you would want to do. It reduces revenues the system needs while making ridership a worse experience for more people.

KCATA head Frank White III has acknowledged that security problems have increased under the free fare system. The agency addressed those problems by adding more security and police, which is better than doing nothing. But it is spending more money on security to address problems caused by collecting zero money in fares. No wonder there is a funding shortfall. Austin, Texas, instituted free fares on buses in the 1990s, and crime dramatically increased. Reinstating fares addressed that problem quickly.

KCATA is finally moving toward reinstating some fares, but it won’t go nearly far enough. According to plans, numerous groups, including the homeless, will remain exempt from paying fares. Politicians and other free-transit backers will blame the inevitable decrease in ridership on the fares while overlooking that the free rides for some will continue to make the bus experience so unpleasant that others who need it will choose not to use it. That’s basically progressive public policy in a nutshell: Make local government services equally awful for everyone.

On another transit front, Independence, Kansas City, and several other cities have been experimenting with a different option for public transit: outsourcing it to a private company. Independence had been contracting for bus services with Transdev bus company, but increased costs and low demand led the city to end those routes and that contract. Now, Independence and Kansas City are contracting with the private company RideCo to offer their own version of Uber or Lyft. To save money and time, the IRIS program in KC takes riders to a general area rather than an exact address, so some walking is required (which most Americans, including the author, could use). The IRIS program is subsidized by taxpayers, as public transit generally is. But it charges a modest fare, as it should. The baseline fare in Independence is $5. Some type of fare is needed both to fund the service and address the (both literal and figurative) free rider problems.

Will this new program succeed? I hope so. Such an experiment with subsidized ride sharing can only be done with the private sector. If it succeeds, wonderful. If it fails, the program can be ended and taxpayers won’t be on the hook for it anymore. Engaging the private sector avoids the complex politics of hiring and firing new government employees.

Successful public transit moves people who depend on it to where they need to be in a safe, efficient, and timely manner. The louder supporters of transit often confuse actual success with more grandiose aims: convincing well-off suburbanites to use transit, designing flashy but useless pet projects, or creating utopia by making everything free. For a perfect example of that confusion, see how KCATA is cutting its bus route hours while the flashy and useless (yet expensive) KC Streetcar route is being expanded.

Reinstituting some bus fares and contracting with private operators for rideshare service will hopefully give KCATA, Independence transit, and the larger region the resources it needs. The purpose of transit is to move people who need it, not to satisfy the dreams of urban planners or ideologues. Free transit and streetcars do the latter, but all actual transit users want is a safe and affordable way to get to work or school on time.

The post “Free” Transit Is Anything But appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

In 2020, Kansas City became the first major U.S. city to eliminate bus fares entirely. At the time, city leaders leaned on a slapdash four-page “mini report” that promised an $11 million local GDP boost. To put it mildly, it was wrong.

Since then, ridership dropped, assaults on drivers went up, and the Kansas City Area Transportation Authority (KCATA) is now staring down a $10 million budget gap. The COVID money that kept KCATA afloat runs out next year. KCATA’s new leadership is asking to study whether fares should return. That’s where we are now: back at the beginning, but with less credibility and fewer resources.

The New York proposal has the same weaknesses. The author estimates a 23% increase in ridership, a 12% increase in speed and billions in economic gains—all for the low, low cost of $600 million in forgone fare revenue. But his math is speculative, his benefits are theoretical, and like in Kansas City, the costs are very real.

The problem isn’t just financial. Prices matter. Fares aren’t only about revenue—they’re also a tool to manage demand, discourage misuse, and incentivize better service. Eliminate them and you get overuse, fewer behavioral constraints, and more wear on already stretched systems. You also change the customer’s relationship with the service. When it’s free, expectations fall—for riders and for the agency.

Proponents talk about fairness. But there’s nothing fair about asking everyone to pay for a system that primarily serves a few. The better solution is targeted subsidies for those who need the help, which would preserve incentives, protect the system, and respect taxpayers.

Kansas City tried fare-free transit. It failed. New York doesn’t have to make the same mistake.

The post Free Buses, Costly Lessons appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Several years ago, Kansas City decided to make its public transit free for all. After all, the purpose of local government is to just give things away for free, isn’t it? For several years, the pandemic-related free federal money train has allowed this “free transit” plan to continue, but that train is coming to a stop. Now, Kansas City leadership has some decisions to make. The transit authority has considered ending the “free” part of the ride before, and now it is time to do away with it once and for all.

Nobody is suggesting funding the entire transit system with fares. Subsidizing transit is an accepted part of urban economics, but that doesn’t mean you should make it free. “Subsidized” transit means you help low-income workers, encourage alternate transportation to large events, and help offset traffic problems. “Free” means you get homeless people sleeping on the bus and cuts to bus lines because you don’t have enough funding. “Free” results in fewer people using transit because the bad aspects of “free” are what matter most to people. Here is what happened in Tucson, Arizona when it moved to “free” transit several years ago:

“We have become a mobile refuge from the elements, frequented by drug users, the mentally ill and violent offenders that have made Sun Tran unsafe to ride,” the local Teamsters union warned in a letter to the city.

As one very sensible Kansas City bus rider put it at a transit meeting on November 13: “she doesn’t mind paying a fare as long as it’s affordable and bus lines don’t get cut.”

Fares are an important part of funding for a decent transit system. Perhaps more importantly, they also help keep the elements out of the system that make other people not want to use it. The Kansas City Area Transportation Authority should reinstate fares immediately.

The post It’s Time to End Free Transit in Kansas City appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Good policies go beyond good intentions. They serve a public need with as few negative consequences as is possible. Our national experience with large-scale, fare-free transit has been a bumpy ride. Kansas City needs to consider all the options and trade-offs before adopting such a significant policy change.

Unfortunately, those concerns were not heeded. At the time, the Kansas City Area Transit Authority (KCATA) CEO Robbie Makinen argued weakly, “Just because nobody else is doing it, that’s not a reason for us not to do it. What’s wrong with trying it? What’s the worst thing that happens? It doesn’t work, and Robbie gets fired.”

Now in 2024, after years of offering free bus service, the KCATA is wrestling with a $10 million gap in its operating budget. The service used COVID relief money to cover its operating losses, but those funds will run out by 2025.

As a result of the budget shortfalls, the new CEO has asked the transit authority’s board for permission to study reinstating fares to cover the shortfall. (The previous CEO cited above did seemingly get fired in July 2022.) One of the current KCATA board members, Michael Shaw, is at least asking the right questions, according to the Star:

“Have we done the homework and figured out what we need to do, what other resources and strategies are in place, before we say this is the policy decision that needs to be made?” Shaw said. “I don’t think we should look at solutions in silos. They have to be looked at collectively and I don’t think we’ve done that homework at this juncture.”

The chairwoman of the board, Melissa Bynum, pointed out what we already know: “Zero fare is not free – period. Somebody pays for it.”

The CEO of the KCATA should be congratulated for seeking such a study. Board members Shaw and Bynum are right to urge diligence and to point out that the money must come from somewhere.

Had the previous KCATA leadership wrestled with these questions a few years ago, the organization may not be in this mess now.

The post Free Bus Fare, Still a Bad Idea appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

The question: how much over the $34.9 million budgeted for the project could 0.7 miles of rail cost taxpayers? The answer: another $10 million, and possibly more:

“We determined that both of the (contractors) were qualified, the technical proposals were sound, but their costs were above the estimate, and both of their costs were above the budget, significantly so,” KCATA Deputy CEO Dick Jarrold said during a Tuesday presentation to the agency’s Finance Committee. The KCATA is one of four groups heading the riverfront streetcar project, alongside Kansas City, the Kansas City Streetcar Authority and Port Authority of Kansas City. . . .

The Mid-America Regional Council (MARC) has authorized about $9.6 million in additional federal dollars for the riverfront streetcar through the Surface Transportation Block Grant program, and a MARC committee has recommended an additional $1 million in federal Carbon Reduction program grant funds. The programs require local matching funds, which Jarrold said are anticipated from Port KC and the Streetcar Authority in an as-yet undetermined amount. [emphasis mine]

Keep in mind that the estimate for the original plan to extend the streetcar to the riverfront was $22.2 million, meaning the apparent final (?) cost of the line is on course to double that estimate, with or without the local match considered.

Yet, that’s been the track record for this toy train for over a decade now. I wrote here in 2011, 2012 and 2013 and for Forbes in 2014 that the Kansas City streetcar was a profligate and bad idea. And yet, despite the many opportunities to prove naysayers wrong, the streetcar remains a remarkably poor fiscal and policy decision to this day.

The post To Nobody’s Surprise, Riverfront Extension of Kansas City Streetcar Going over Budget appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Meanwhile, the KC Streetcar Authority has broken ground on a 351 million-dollar expansion, financed by $171 million in federal funds, with the rest coming from a new transportation development district (TDD). This special taxing district will levy a 1% sales tax on areas around Main Street, generating millions in revenue to maintain the streetcar’s “free” admission status.

As Show-Me Institute analysts have argued in the past, the KC Streetcar has failed to generate economic growth and raise property values and does not improve Kansas City’s transit system as a whole. Throwing hundreds of millions of dollars at expanding the streetcar not only continues to grow a poor transit system but also neglects the more valuable bus system. Between 2016 and 2020, buses were the primary form of transportation for about 8,500 commuters in the Kansas City metro area. In contrast, there were only about 250 commuters in the entire metro area who got to work using the streetcar. In addition, the KCATA has an annual operating budget of $57.6 million, which is only about a fifth of what is being spent to expand the streetcar.

Kansas City’s MAX bus system is supposed to be a form of Bus Rapid Transit (BRT), but with buses only coming every half hour on two of the three MAX routes, it fails in this respect. These routes need more frequent service, which means more buses and more drivers. Instead of continuing to pour money into an overpriced, ineffective streetcar system, Kansas City should consider diverting funds to its buses, which could be improved at only a fraction of the cost of current streetcar spending.

Politicians like grandiose plans, shiny new objects, ribbon-cutting ceremonies, and spending exorbitant amounts of other people’s money. What their constituents need is a bus system that runs effectively so that they can schedule their day properly. Politicians seek the former at the expense of the latter, and it ends up hurting the very people they most often claim to be helping.

The post As Kansas City’s Streetcar Expands, Its Buses Suffer appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

But don’t take my word for it. Look at the research. An economic impact study was conducted by the Center for Economic Information at the Department of Economics at the University of Missouri-Kansas City that indicates between $15 and $17 million will be generated from the Zero Fare initiative. For those living paycheck to paycheck, as most Americans are, the cost of a monthly bus pass or cumulative single fares can make the difference in deciding which bills to pay. Tax revenue alone is expected to increase about $700,000 from the increased spending, and 100 jobs would be created.

UMKC’s Center for Economic Information (CEI) has no such study on its website. And the public information officer at KCATA responded that the CEI had not yet presented the final version of its paper. So I asked for a copy of whatever the KCATA CEO had used to make his claim. I was sent a four-page “draft mini report” dated December 5, 2019. (A PDF copy of this mini-report can be found at the bottom of this page.) The report does not list an author. But it didn’t require a degree in economics to see serious flaws in the analysis.

First, the study does not contemplate the net effect of a fare-free bus system—it simply adds up the costs saved by passengers and ignores any additional cost occurring elsewhere. It does not consider any additional tax, reduction on city spending in other programs or additional costs to the KCATA due to increased demand and wear and tear. Like a child arguing in favor of getting a family dog, the report counts all the benefits and none of the cost. For this reason alone this mini-report ought to be dismissed immediately.

I shared the draft report with some university economists for their comments. Each of them pointed out the failure to account for additional spending to cover the lost fare revenue.

Dr. Howard Wall at Lindenwood University in St. Louis pointed out that the authors misapplied the model they used to calculate the benefit. Understood correctly, the model, called IMPLAN, calculates the impact of additional money injected into an economy from outside—such as the local impact of a large federal grant. But this is not the case with fare-free buses in Kansas City. The policy would only move money already within the local economy by shifting the burden of bus fare. The UMKC mini-report argues, in effect, that one can fill a bathtub by moving water from one side of the tub to the other.

Dr. Byron Schlomach at Oklahoma State University was dismayed by the speciousness of the claims of growth in regional gross domestic product (GDP).  The only way regional GDP could rise by the amount claimed in the analysis is if free buses attracted huge numbers of people (or made workers more productive) and added money or physical capital such as buildings and machines. As you can guess, there is no evidence for this anywhere. It’s hard to imagine any scenario in which eliminating bus fare in Kansas City attracts significant residents, jobs, or capital.

Dr. Schlomach also offered another compelling point. He wrote by email, “Pricing plays an important role even in 90% subsidized, publicly-owned enterprises like bus transit. It can provide information for where and when the service is most highly valued and serve as an indicator for where resources should be allocated.” How would KCATA collect information on the popularity of routes if not through the farebox? Perhaps it could install people-counting sensors on every bus entrance, but then that too is an additional expense not considered in this analysis.

But the giveaway from UMKC is on the last page. The draft mini-report spends one-fifth of its total content discussing the ideas of Henri Lefebvre, a 20th-century French Marxist philosopher and sociologist. Why this is included in a memo claiming to be an “economic impact” analysis is a mystery. But it indicates that this was not an attempt to understand the impact of a significant change in public policy—it does none of that.

Rather, it seems that advocates of fare-free buses, aware that the research and experiences of others who have considered fare-free buses, sought out someone willing to make dubious claims of a positive economic impact. That UMKC lent its name to this is a shame.

The post About That “Economic Impact Study” Conducted on Free Bus Service in Kansas City . . . appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Kansas City, Missouri, made news around the country last month with reports that city officials had done away with fares on its municipal bus system. But neither the announcement nor the results the city can expect are as clear-cut as they first seem. The reality is that Kansas City has not adopted a fare-free bus system, nor has it considered the broader implications of doing so. In fact, city leaders have no idea how they will pay for it.

What actually happened: Kansas City’s City Council instructed the city manager to work with transit officials on a policy that would “include a funding request in the next fiscal year budget to make fixed route public transportation fare free within the City.” The city’s next fiscal year does not begin until May 1, 2020.

One reason for all this is the 2.2-mile streetcar the city completed in 2016. Its operations and administration are independent from the bus system and are funded through sales taxes, assessments on property along the route, and additional support from the city’s general fund.

The streetcar, which is free to ride, also receives $2 million from sales taxes meant to fund regular transit. It’s viewed by many as a free party bus for tourists, operating alongside buses that low-income workers must pay to use for trips to work and school.

Advocates of the free-fare transit proposal argue that the move to ditch fares on the bus system would address inequality without risking a drop in ridership that a streetcar fare would cause.

Locally, the idea has been making inroads for a while. Free bus passes became the norm for veterans two years ago, and last year the system offered the same to students. The Authority claims that over the past few years, 23 percent of riders have paid no fare.

Making the entire system free may be attractive to transit advocates, but it’s a move with risks—risks that seemingly haven’t been assessed. This was underscored when, in an interview with local newspaper The Pitch, Kansas City Area Transportation Authority CEO Robert “Robbie” Makinen offered, “Just because nobody else is doing it, that’s not a reason for us not to do it. What’s wrong with trying it? What’s the worst thing that happens? It doesn’t work, and Robbie gets fired.”

But the idea isn’t new, and that’s not the worst that can happen.

Other cities have tried fare-free bus service—and abandoned it. A 2002 study by Jennifer Perone and Joel Volinski of the Center for Urban Transportation Research concluded:

. . . (A) fare-free policy might be appropriate for smaller transit systems in certain communities, but is ill-advised for larger transit systems in major urban areas because experience shows that in larger systems, a tremendous amount of criminal activity, as well as a sharp increase in ridership, caused higher maintenance costs, labor costs, and operational costs and drove away existing riders.

In a 2012 book, “Implementation and Outcomes of Fare-Free Transit Systems,” Volinski detailed a fare-free pilot program in Austin, Texas. Ridership increased by as much as 70 percent, but there were issues of, “overcrowded buses, disruptive passengers, and unhappy bus operators.” The program was discontinued. Denver tried a similar program, saw the same results, and discontinued the effort.

Riders get it. According to a 2019 TransitCenter surveys of passengers around the country, “most low-income bus riders rate lowering fares as less important than improving the quality of the service.” (KCATA is undertaking its own “comprehensive review and redesign of transit service,” which included a survey, but as of this writing, KCATA has not completed the review or shared with me any questionnaire of passengers.)

Then there is the cost of going fare-free, estimated between $8 million and $12 million annually in Kansas City.

Given the ridership increase in other places that have tried it, the transit authority will need to cover not only its current fare box revenue, but also the costs of serving increased demand. During legislative discussion on the resolution, Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas suggested returning the $2 million currently diverted to the streetcar. Councilwoman Kathryn Shields offered an amendment, adopted by the Council, that also instructs the city manager also to report how this potential budget outlay will impact other city services.

Again, none of this is known.

Good policies go beyond good intentions—they serve a public need with as few negative consequences as is possible. Our national experience with large-scale, fare-free transit has been a bumpy ride. Kansas City needs to consider all the options and trade-offs before adopting such a significant policy change. Reporting on the matter suggests that this has not yet been done.

The post Fare Free Public Transit? Not so Fast appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

The post Patrick Tuohey on KCPT’s Ruckus appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Not as triumphantly as its advocates might hope (or try to suggest).

On an average day in 2015, over 41,000 trips were taken on KCATA’s system. Since its opening in May, the Kansas City streetcar has had an average daily ridership of 6,365, or 15% of total transit ridership. That’s a significant number of boardings, but still substantially lower than a busy bus route (the #70-Grand in St. Louis has over 9,000 boardings a day) and many times more expensive.

Buses outperform the streetcar in others ways, too. First, the streetcar is primarily moving passengers who are already near their destination downtown; it isn’t usually getting people from home to work, etc., like buses currently do. More importantly, the streetcar route has been served by MAX bus-rapid-transit service and local bus service for years. And the streetcar travels in traffic, at the same speed as buses. From a transportation perspective, the streetcar is redundant and unnecessary.

“But streetcars have a greater capacity than buses!” rail advocates reply. Streetcar vehicles can purportedly hold up to 150 passengers; however, articulated buses, with over 50 seats and standing room, can accommodate 75 passengers. The City could simply run two buses for each streetcar to match capacity and enjoy significant cost savings (an articulated bus costs 18% of what Kansas City paid for each streetcar vehicle).

In essence, the streetcar offers a more expensive way to move people along a short, 2.2-mile route that Kansas City’s bus system already serves. Is this really the best use of taxpayer money?

The post Streetcars: Suddenly a (Poorly Performing) Transportation Service appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

While the streetcar had problems in the first few days of ridership, none garnered as much media attention as its derailment on May 23. Two days later, service was halted due to electrical concerns. On May 26 the streetcar was hit by a car at an intersection, halting service. Even supporters admit it was a bad week.

What are we to make of it? What is a reasonable expectation of downtime for a streetcar system? According to the 2014 National Transit Database, streetcars run about 95 percent of their scheduled vehicle miles. That sounds impressive until you realize that it is the lowest performance percentage of any rail transit. Nationally, systems such as commuter rail, heavy rail, and light rail run at 105.2%, 97.3% and 98.9% of scheduled vehicle miles, respectively.

All totaled, metro buses run 102.8 percent of scheduled vehicle miles. In Kansas City, the KCATA runs 99.8 percent for both metro buses and bus rapid transit such as the MAX lines.

The difference between 95 percent for street cars and 102.8 percent for buses may seem small enough, until you consider the costs of each. My colleague Joe Miller wrote of the rejected 2014 streetcar expansion that Kansas City could buy 100 additional buses for the same cost of expanding the streetcar system 7.6 miles.

As Kansas Citians consider efforts to expand the streetcar line, hard data like transit costs and performance need to take precedence over feel-good puff pieces. That’s the only way to promote good public policy.

The post Evaluating the Kansas City Streetcar appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

How successful was its launch?

That’s tough to say. On its opening weekend there was at least one train (and communication) breakdown, which caused the police to empty not only that train but the one behind it.

As for ridership, each streetcar is equipped with an automatic passenger counter (APC), which is industry standard. Ridership numbers are knowable daily and by hour. Here is the daily ridership so far, as provided by Kansas City Area Transportation Authority and the Streetcar Authority:

·         Friday: 12,230

·         Saturday: 14,648

·         Sunday: 5,448

·         Monday: 3,945

How many riders should we expect? Well, that itself appears to be a moving target. The Streetcar Authority CEO recently said that the expected ridership is 2,700 per day. But back in late 2014, we were told ridership would be 3,500 per day. That’s a decrease of 25% before it even started running!

These numbers matter, because ridership will be an important consideration if voters are asked to expand the system.

As opening weekend recedes into the past, it is important to make information about the streetcar easily accessible to the public. We at the Show-Me Institute are thrilled that there is a standard method for counting ridership, and we look forward to collecting and reporting those ridership numbers often.

The post Kansas City Streetcar Ridership Numbers appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Let’s consider the charge of bullying. Companies like Uber and Lyft have bargained hard with local regulators, trying to get rules changed to fit their business model. But let’s not forget how for-hire vehicles were regulated in Kansas City and St. Louis before these companies came along. Regulatory bodies (often representing existing taxi companies) capped the supply of cabs, fixed pricing, limited business practices, and stifled innovation. When Uber and Lyft tried to enter these markets a couple of years ago, regulators and taxi representatives fought over every inch of regulation, and the fight continues in Saint Louis. That foot-dragging is what prompted efforts to regulate these companies at the state (rather than the local) level. So who are the bullies? The regulators who micromanaged the entire taxi market for generations, or Uber and Lyft?

Now let’s talk about tax revenue. Under the current regulations, ridesharing drivers would not have to pay local earnings taxes in Kansas City and Saint Louis simply for picking up passengers there. According to one Kanas City Star author, Uber will be using city streets but not paying for them. First of all, provisions in these bills don’t specifically target the earnings tax; they prohibit municipalities from charging any kind of special tax on ridesharing companies, which happens. And second, the idea that streets would be starved of funding because of earnings-tax losses just isn’t credible. Kansas City has long treated street maintenance as the red-headed stepchild of the budget-making process, with only 3% of the city’s funding going to streets. In fact, in the upcoming budget, the tax-incentive budget is equivalent to the streets’ capital budget. When we consider that this includes both federal and state fuel tax support, and that many Uber and Lyft drivers are Kansas City residents who pay other taxes, the idea that we need to kill regulatory reform to give Kansas City a larger cut seems a bit much. Any increased tax revenue would be more likely to go the Kansas City Area Transportation Authority than to streets.

Companies like Uber and Lyft are pushing for long-overdue reform in cities across the country. And unlike their opponents, they aren’t seeking to outlaw their competition—only to run their businesses their way. They only have political clout because residents in Missouri see the great benefit of these services and want to use them. If newspaper columnists or policymakers don’t like Uber’s business model, they don’t have to drive for Uber and they don’t have to ride Uber. But they shouldn’t be allowed to make that decision for the rest of us, or empower those who would. 

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On Oct. 4, 2015, six routes will be affected, including 24-Independence and 30-Northeast. Stops being removed will have Rider Alerts posted at each location. In a press release from the KCATA, the biggest factor in removing a stop is low ridership at a specific location, which will provide a smoother ride and help keep buses on time.

This is good news: a sign that the KCATA is reviewing their ridership information and making changes where necessary. But they can do more than just make changes to where buses stop, as this latest plan does. In the past, KCATA has issued bulletins about changes in service. Some are temporary responses to construction or large events, and some are more permanent changes in routes. As populations shift, KCATA is able to assess need and make changes to routes, route frequencies, and the number and location of stops. This is a good thing, and underscores the exact reason why modern bus transit is superior to light rail and streetcars. Not only can fixed rail not be rerouted to account for changing population needs, the train cars themselves cannot even change lanes to avoid broken down vehicles or other train cars.

As has been said before, trains don't take you were you want to go, they take you where developers and urban planners want you to go. KCATA's recent actions demonstrate exactly why buses are a better transit choice.

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According to the Star, the cost of Kansas City’s streetcar is comparable to similar projects in cities like Tucson, Seattle, Cincinnati, and Portland. The paper got their “data” from the Community Streetcar Coalition, which is a pro-streetcar lobbying organization (of which the city of Kansas City and KCATA are members), not a research group.

In dissecting the numbers, the first thing to note is that streetcars are virtually all incredibly expensive for the level of service they provide. That service is comparable to a short bus route, yet they are often an order of magnitude more expensive. That being said, the Star’s claims on the relative expense of the Kansas City streetcar are disputed. According to a report by AECOM (an architectural consulting firm), Kansas City’s streetcar system is more expensive per mile than Tucson, Seattle, and Cincinnati. Furthermore, the system is much more expensive per mile than many “vintage” streetcar lines like the Loop Trolley in Saint Louis, as the following chart demonstrates:

*2014 dollars                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                       

Of course, there are different ways of estimating cost per mile, and (being custom projects) no streetcar system is exactly alike. Asking which streetcar has the highest cost per mile is akin to identifying the most costly SUV on the market given factors like gas mileage, amenities, and dealer warranties. However, arguing the Kansas City streetcar is not the most expensive streetcar out there is a little like saying the Escalade is a better value than the Land Rover. It’s an expensive luxury, whether or not it’s the most expensive luxury.

When Kansas City planned its streetcar, it did not plan a cost-effective transportation system. Instead, it opted for an expensive status symbol designed to move money, not people. And while its costs may be comparable to similar vanity projects in other cities, that in no way indicates shrewd spending by Kansas City planners. 

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However, while Kansas City has had some success revitalizing its downtown, the most recent transit data does not suggest any contemporaneous surge in transit usage.

As the chart above demonstrates, despite the fact that total employment has now exceeded prerecession levels in the Kansas City metropolitan area, Kansas City Area Transit Authority (KCATA) ridership has yet to recover. In fact, the most recent data shows total passenger trips are still fewer than they were before the recession by about 800,000 annual riders. Interestingly, transit passenger trips recovered relatively quickly until early 2012, since which time transit usage has actually fallen.

Proponents of transit expansion might argue that Kansas City simply has substandard public transportation options, and that the addition of bus rapid transit, light rail, and streetcars will greatly increase passenger trips. While some net new trips are likely given better service, KCATA’s recent experience should cast doubt on just how much needs to be done to attract new riders. KCATA opened new bus rapid transit lines, a.k.a. MAX routes, in 2005, 2011, and 2013. Since that time, increases in MAX ridership have been met with decreased use in regular bus passenger trips. It is possible to see MAX trips (which are generally longer) as more valuable than the lost bus trips, but there is no evidence that MAX drew significant new riders to KCATA; it is most likely the case that existing transit riders diverted to the better service.

The postrecession performance of KCATA is a bit of a puzzle, and I encourage anyone with reasonable explanations to give them in the comments. However, Kansas City’s employment growth and the increasing numbers of millennials living downtown has not spurred large transit passenger growth. Instead of pushing expensive rail transit plans, perhaps regional planners should ask how Kansas City, with no rail transit and some of the most highway miles per capita of any major city, was able to become to a millennial destination in the first place.

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“Good, smart transit—a mix of buses rails, and other people movers—is a vital component of any successful city.”

But does a city really need a streetcar, or for that matter any type of light rail, to be successful?

Certainly many cities in the United States, more than 50, have some form of fixed rail transit. The largest rail systems are the New York City Subway and the Chicago L, but many small cities like Kenosha, Wis., Little Rock, Ark., and Tucson, Ariz., also have light rail or streetcars. However, many cities, large and small, do not have rail transit. Cities like Honolulu, San Antonio, Orlando, Indianapolis, and Cincinnati have been popular cities to work and play in for many years without much or any fixed rail. These cities, and many others like Kansas City, rely on bus systems.

There’s no reason why Kansas City cannot continue to rely on buses. Whether it’s rapid transit or simply providing service to wide areas, buses are capable of meeting cities’ needs in most situations. For example, the Chicago Transit Authority’s bus system had more than 314 million boardings in 2012. KCATA only had around 16 million boardings that year. The limits of KCATA’s bus system is yet to be reached.

While rail systems may be necessary in cities with significant congestion and population densities, nowhere does Kansas City have population or traffic to make rail necessary. And while it is not necessary, rail has its drawbacks, paramount of which is cost. For instance, Kansas City’s proposed streetcar expansion (less than 10 miles of routes) costs were more than double the entire capital spending on KCATA’s 250-plus bus fleet from 1992 to 2002.

Rail supporters contend that rail transit creates development, drives density, and is necessary to make Kansas City an attractive city for people to live in. But much of that belief is based on anecdotal evidence from successful cities with rail, usually ignoring places where rail has failed to drive development. Cities like Cleveland, Detroit, Baltimore, Buffalo, and Saint Louis have seen little regeneration from their rail lines, some of which cost more than a billion dollars.

Kansas City needs efficient transit that serves the community. It does not need rail to be successful, and residents should not let city officials with status anxiety waste hundreds of millions just to say Kansas City has rail.

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