KC leaders promised airport transit for World Cup. What’s possible, and what’s a pipe dream?

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Kansas Citians have been dreaming of a train to the airport since before KCI opened for business in 1972.

Four years earlier, a local engineering firm envisioned a monorail whooshing travelers downtown. Downtown businesses and the federal government then seized on a hovercraft — they called it an “air train” — as a viable way of transporting passengers to and from Kansas City International Airport.

Then when those futuristic ideas were shelved in the mid-1970s, light rail became the big dream that never came true. Countless proposals failed to get voter approval — or political support when one unworkable light rail ballot measure did eventually pass.

Then civic malaise sunk in.

Today, the only public transit options to KCI consist of a new public ride-share service and a single RideKC bus route, the Boardwalk-KCI 229, that runs once an hour and takes an hour.

Inadequate public transportation to the airport is one of Kansas City’s biggest challenges as the 2026 men’s World Cup approaches. Of the 16 North American cities chosen to host soccer matches, Kansas City came in 15th in FIFA’s scoring for overall quality of transportation connectivity and mobility.

Guadalajara, Mexico, was last.

City officials say the transit improvements necessary to meet the challenge of getting World Cup visitors where they need to go present Kansas City with an opportunity to make fixes that will last for the long term.

It’s one that Mayor Quinton Lucas said the city will not squander. But the results so far have fallen short of the expectations that Lucas and City Manager Brain Platt raised last year for a rapid transportation system to the airport.

Platt said in June 2023 that a rail connection was the city’s goal and, whether intended or not, left some with the impression that it might come soon.

“Fixed route transit between the airport and downtown will unlock new opportunities for jobs, access to services, and for land development projects,” he said in a news release at the time. “This new fixed rail service to key destinations will ensure our residents and visitors have the benefit of safe, affordable, reliable transit options to move around our city.”

That August, Platt told KCPT’s Flatland that a rail connection could conceivably even be spooled up in time for the World Cup:

“Industry experts tell me we could probably build the rail lines; it’s the cars themselves that are on backorder and delayed,” he said.

The city added specificity to this goal in announcing a new partnership with the federal Department of Transportation that fall. The list of potential projects included a 21-mile rail line to the airport at an estimated cost of $10.5 billion.

But it’s become clear that this goal is a long-term one at best, and the city’s momentum on it has lagged.

A temporary transit fix

Local World Cup organizers say they will have a temporary transit fix in place by tournament time to transport soccer fans in June and July of 2026 — and it most definitely will not include rail.

It will, instead, mean putting a lot more buses in service, while coordinating with rental car, ride-share and taxi companies to ensure there are plenty of ways to get hundreds of thousands of visitors where they need to go.

“We will need to lease buses, and we are actively working on that plan,” KC2026 chief executive officer Pam Kramer said Thursday during her regular World Cup progress report to the Kansas City Council.

The cup committee likely won’t have a full plan until the first quarter of 2026, which is the deadline it set for transportation consultants.

HNTB, the firm that did the 1968 monorail study, is one of them, along with Burns & McDonnell and Transportation Management Solutions, which had a key role in transportation planning for the 2022 World Cup in Qatar.

“They’re late getting to it, but they’ll figure it out,” said David Johnson, chair of the Kansas City Regional Transit Alliance, a nonprofit group that advocates for better public transportation.

But his fear is that the region might not reap the long-term benefits to our public transportation system that local officials have promised are within reach.

“This opportunity is absolutely probably going to happen where we spend a bunch of money, probably a lot of other people’s money, investing in a temporary solution with no long-term benefit,” he said.

‘Something that lasts long beyond the World Cup’

When Lucas announced formation of the KC2026 organizing committee about a year and a half ago, he said the World Cup would be a catalyst for making long-term progress in public transportation.

City government would ask experts for ideas on how to improve transportation to the airport for the long term, Lucas told reporters at that kickoff event at Arrowhead.

“We recognize right now, it’s not easy to get from KCI Airport to downtown, certainly not easy to get from the airport out there to the stadium,” Lucas said. “And so our big step right now is going to see how we can improve that in a structural way, not just with the World Cup, but a long term connection with how we build up our community. Our goal here is for something that lasts long beyond the World Cup.”

That next month, City Hall put out a news release announcing that it issued a formal “request for expressions of interest.” One goal was to come up with short-term ideas about World Cup transportation, a job that the organizing committee has taken on.

The other goal was to hire experts who could make “an in-depth assessment and strategic plan addressing rapid transportation needs, particularly the connectivity between Kansas City International Airport, downtown, and other key destinations.”

Study contract delayed

Now 15 months later, the city has not hired anyone to do that study.

Kansas City initially set last fall as its self-imposed deadline for making a selection. But none was announced.

Then in February, again without explanation, the city posted a document on an online public bidding site asking vendors if they had any interest in working on what was labeled “Project No. EV3164 Rapid Transportation from Airport to Downtown.”

According to the project description, the project was “poised to revolutionize public transit in Kansas City by evaluating various rapid transportation options, such as Bus Rapid Transit (BRT), heavy rail, light rail, and automatic/autonomous shuttle systems.”

The deadline for submitting proposals was April 5, but as of Monday, the website said that the bids were still “under evaluation.”

More than two weeks ago, a Star reporter requested an interview with the city’s transportation director or other officials with knowledge of the rail project about its status. But a city spokesperson declined that request and asked that all questions be submitted in writing.

Jason Waldron, city transportation director, finally responded on Monday with short written responses. He said the city hopes to hire a consultant soon to look at the possibility of building a rail connection to the airport at some future date, almost certainly long after the World Cup has left town.

“Transformative transportation projects like fixed rail to the airport are often prescriptive and take some time,” he wrote. “The intent is to develop a long-term plan that helps local and regional policymakers understand what fixed rail to the airport could look like with updated costs and analysis. That effort will also include cost-effective interim steps and solutions that could be implemented.”

The cost of rail

Waldron said the city’s planning effort will build off of a study that the metropolitan area’s multi-jurisdictional planning agency — the Mid-America Regional Council (MARC) — and the KCATA had underway at the time the city was advertising for its own consultants. The city said it had two staffers the study’s advisory team, which was made up of representatives from 19 governmental agencies and civic organizations that, according to MARC, met monthly “to p;rovide direction and feedback on the project.”

That 165-page report came out in January. With the exception of the driverless shuttle systems mentioned in the city’s latest request for proposals, the MARC and KCATA study got answers to the key questions that the city wants its consultants to research, if and when they are hired.

Kimley Horn estimated that constructing a light rail line from downtown to the airport would cost $3.4 billion to $6 billion.

A commuter train on existing railroad tracks and others that would need to be built to access KCI: $1 billion to $1.4 billion.

Bus rapid transit: as much as $480 million.

Forget rail and buy buses

That’s why the MARC and KCATA study concluded that the best way to improve public transit to the airport would be to run express buses every 30 minutes during the hours when most air travelers and airport employees need transportation.

Total startup capital costs: $3 million to $5 million for new buses, with annual operating costs of $4 million.

Other than coming up with the money, the main hangup would be the delay in putting buses in service, as bus manufacturers have order backlogs, said Ron Achelpohl, transportation director at MARC.

He declined to say why he thinks Kansas City decided to do its own study when his agency’s study with the KCATA was already underway before theirs was announced.

“In fairness, we were focused on really short term, kind of a feasibility of some short term improvements that wouldn’t have required a lot of extensive capital investment to build out,” he said.

“Our premise going in was what can we do in the nearer term? And so if you look at our study, it’s really based on a kind of traditional bus-based technology. We ended up honing in on the idea of running a sort of express bus service with motor coaches that are pretty familiar technology.”

Motor coaches like the ones Greyhound and tour companies use rather than a regular city bus.

Kansas City plans to use that report, along with others, “as a starting point for a fresh look at rapid transit from downtown Kansas City to the airport,” Waldron said, adding:

“Building on the work already completed through MARC’s effort and previous plans, Phase 1 of the City’s planning effort is the pathway towards the construction of robust, rapid transit. It involves getting expert insights, leaving no stone unturned in assessing solutions for the long term.”

Eric Bunch, the biggest public transit advocate on the Kansas City Council, said he had nothing to do with the city’s request for proposals for a study of rail connections to the airport and is not a fan of the idea.

“I have gone on record and will continue to do so in saying that expansion of rail transit should prioritize improving the lives of Kansas Citians on a daily basis. Rail to the airport should be pretty far down the list of priorities,” he said in an emailed response to The Star.

He thinks updating the regional transit plan should happen first.

“That being said, we can and should immediately launch a new express bus route between downtown and KCI. I am actively discussing this with the city manager and my colleagues.”

The Johnson County option

While those discussions occur, Johnson County could well get there first. The county recently applied for a $2.4 million federal grant to fund express bus service from KCI to Overland Park “for the World Cup and perhaps beyond,” said Josh Powers, Johnson County transit division director.

“But no decisions have been made by our board regarding this potential service.”

As for that hovercraft/air train from downtown to KCI that Kansas City’s leaders considered a possibility many decades ago, “The Grumman” tracked air-cushion research vehicle never came anywhere near achieving the 300 mph on the test track that scientists had hoped.

“The air train may be closer than anyone realizes,” a Kansas City Times editorial had posited in December 1972.

Not all that close. Today you can find the prototype for KCI’s air train rusting in the elements at the Railway Museum in Pueblo, Colorado, which is almost 600 miles west of here.