By Brad Ziegler
The Kansas City City Council passed a $2.5 billion budget on March 20 for the fiscal year beginning May 1, including $71 million for funding of the Kansas City Area Transportation Authority (KCATA).
Around $6.8 million was added to the budget to prevent proposed service cuts submitted by the KCATA. Those cuts would have eliminated 13 of 29 bus routes, including routes 57, 75 and 29 that travel through south Kansas City. Money originally budgeted to go to LED streetlight upgrades will instead go toward saving current bus routes and KCATA jobs.
The proposed cuts came after the KCATA identified a proposed shortfall of more than $32 million in revenue. To compensate, KCATA reduced the number of routes, buses, service hours, and transit workers (171). The cancellation of the recently enacted IRIS on-demand transit program was also at risk.
The proposed cuts have been met with large and vocal opposition by public transit riders, drivers and supporters at public budget hearings and at the March 20th city council meeting at City Hall. Their voices were heard by the city council resulting in a last-minute proposal to provide the funding that the KCATA said it needed to maintain the existing routes and schedules through October 31. Organizers hope that an agreement for funding for the full year could be reached in the meantime.
Speaking at the Center Planning and Development Council meeting earlier this week, Sixth District City Councilman Jonathan Duncan explored the history. “The funding problems for the KCATA aren’t new,” he said. “They were identified in 2013 in a resolution that stated that their financials were unstable and that there needed to be more regional funding.”
Municipalities such as Grandview, Independence, Blue Springs, Gladstone, Raytown, Liberty, Parkville and Riverside have cut funding to the regional transportation authority in recent years when the costs jumped dramatically. The expenses do not have a designated source of funding in those cities as they do in Kansas City, which has a dedicated 3/8 cent sales tax that funds KCATA.
The shortfall between the KCATA’s falling revenues and rising operating costs has been covered in recent years by federal pandemic relief funding and operational reserves but those sources of funding have been depleted.
“Kansas City is responsible for 99% of the KCATA service costs, but their governance structure [the KCATA’s board of directors] doesn’t reflect our investment,” said Duncan.
When asked whether there has been any consideration to reinstate bus fares as a way to cover the shortfall, Bryce Shields, the Innovations and Performance Lead from the KCATA, was skeptical. “Prior to implementation of the zero fare concept, we collected between $9 million and $15 million, after accounting for the cost of collecting the fare,” he said at the meeting. “While that is not an insignificant number, it is not enough to cover the shortfall.”
Councilman Duncan said he would prefer free fares, but admitted he was in the minority. “What I have heard from other municipalities is that they do want fares,” he said. “In order to bring other municipalities back into the system to help cover the overhead costs of the regional system, we would need to re-establish fares system-wide.”
The $46 million stopgap proposal does not include the continuation of IRIS service, which costs about $10 million annually, in the new fiscal year and IRIS drivers continue to express their opposition to the elimination of the service that was only recently initiated to fill the gaps in the KCATA route map. The rideshare program, similar to Lyft or Uber, costs $3 to $5 per trip.
IRIS driver Bakar Mohamed issued a statement after attending Tuesday’s budget meeting. “We urge our leaders to also examine alternative ways to operate IRIS, whether that means KCATA operating the program in-house, or contracting with a responsible contractor who would honor our rights on the job.”