Could Kansas City’s new deal with the feds help build a high-speed rail to the airport?
Kansas City’s wish list of big-dollar transportation projects got a boost with Tuesday’s announcement of the city’s new partnership with the federal government.
A streetcar line from the Truman Sports Complex to the University of Kansas Medical Center and high-speed rail from downtown to the airport. Reconnecting neighborhoods split in two by the interstates. Repairs and replacements for dozens of decaying bridges.
Those are some of the $15 billion of transportation and public works projects for which the city might get more financial support thanks to an agreement with the federal Department of Transportation.
Kansas City is the second city to become part of the emerging projects program from the DOT’s Build America Bureau. Austin, Texas, was the first nearly a year ago.
“This Department is always ready to partner with cities to help realize their unique visions for safer, cleaner, more modern transportation,” U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said in a written statement. “I’ve had the chance to see firsthand the great strides Kansas City is taking to modernize their infrastructure, and this agreement will help advance that work for years to come.”
Buttigieg did not attend the announcement at the Barkley Building in the Crossroads area.
The arrangement doesn’t mean the city will suddenly rake in billions of dollars in federal aid, but Kansas City will have a better chance getting grants, loans and funding from the bipartisan infrastructure bill passed two years ago.
In prepared remarks released to the news media ahead of Tuesday’s announcement, Mayor Quinton Lucas was hopeful that the arrangement will bring big benefits.
“I am thrilled about our collaboration,” he said, “to bring billions of dollars to our community to make improvements, including reconnecting communities once torn apart by highway construction, creating a rapid transit system from the airport to the urban core, and making critical repairs to our bridges, ultimately creating a safer, more interconnected Kansas City for generations.”
Many of the projects on the city’s wish list are in the early planning stage, such as that proposed rail line from downtown to Kansas City International Airport, which the city estimates would cost $10.5 billion.
By comparison, the new terminal cost $1.5 billion and took six years to plan and build. So should a rail line to the airport be built, don’t buy your tickets just yet.
For others, construction could be just around the corner, if funding gaps can be filled. Among them is the 5.5-acre park that will cap Interstate 670 on the south end of the downtown freeway loop. The South Loop Project might also entail 200 new apartments and 450 parking spaces.
City officials also believe that the federal partnership will help advance projects now under study that might reconnect the East Side and West Side neighborhoods through which highway construction cut gashes in the 1960s onward.
Combined, those projects are estimated to cost more than $3 billion.
