The Kansas City Area Transportation Authority is bracing for drastic cuts to service if Kansas City passes its proposed budget, according to documents obtained by KCUR.

To maintain the current status quo for its Kansas City operations — which already includes long wait times and the fewest bus routes the agency’s had in decades — the KCATA needs about $117 million. The city plans to give the agency $71 million in its 2025-2026 budget.

Without any more funding, KCATA will cut 13 of its 29 routes in Kansas City, Missouri. Those cuts would affect more than 6,500 people, about 18% of the city’s total weekday ridership.

Anthony Cunningham is a leader with Sunrise Movement KC, a climate activist organization that’s been pushing the city to increase funding for KCATA for years. Cunningham relies on the bus and says fewer and less frequent routes will make it harder for him and other riders to get to work, school, the grocery store and doctor’s appointments.

“These proposed cuts to our bus and paratransit services are excessive, and are a slap in the face to poor and working-class Kansas Citians who rely on these services every single day,” Cunningham said.

The agency will also stop service at 11 p.m. instead of 1 a.m., and will only operate seven routes on the weekends, about a third of what it currently operates on weekends. The agency will also run fewer buses on its remaining 16 routes, leaving riders waiting even longer.

The proposed route cuts are:

• #9, 9th Street
• #11, Northeast Westside
• #19, Crossroads
• #21, Cleveland Antioch
• #23, 23rd Street
• #25, Troost Local
• #27, 27th Street
• #28, Blue Ridge
• #29, Blue Ridge Limited
• #57, Wornall
• #63, 63rd Street
• #71, Prospect Local
• #75, 75th Street

The agency would lay off about 28% of its total workforce, or about 171 staff members. That includes 130 drivers as well as maintenance and administrative staff. It would also reduce quarterly attendance bonuses and overtime bonuses.

The agency’s plan assumes the city will cut the on-demand transit service IRIS, which costs the KCATA about $7.6 million. But the city council has not yet introduced cutting the rideshare program.

Reginald Townsend, chair of KCATA’s board, said that the agency is committed to working with local, state and federal partners to secure more funding.

“Our focus remains on providing safe, efficient, and accessible transportation options that support the economic vitality and mobility needs of our communities,” Townsend said. “While ridership remains strong, we recognize the need to make strategic adjustments to right-size the agency.”

Nic Miller is president of the Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1287, the union that represents KCATA’s bus drivers. He said his members are angry and terrified because they don’t know what will happen to their jobs.

“It’s very hard for me, as a president, not to have the answers,” Miller said. “It’s hard for the company not to have the answers when all the answers rely upon the city. So now everyone’s just kind of left in limbo.”

Kansas City has not decreased its funding to KCATA in the past few years, but operational costs have risen drastically since 2021 due to inflation and increases in wages, security costs, marketing and paratransit. The agency’s total operating cost went from about $84 million in 2021 to $113 million last year.

If the KCATA’s costs this year mirror last year’s, its funding will fall $28 million shy of expenses, a gap that it covered last year with a sales tax reserve and federal COVID relief funds. But KCATA expects that it will need about $117 million to maintain the status quo of bus service due to rising costs, making the real funding gap about $32 million.

Other U.S. transit agencies are facing similar financial crises. In 2024, the Mid-America Regional Council released a study comparing Kansas City’s bus system to 10 peer cities and four aspirational cities, like Minneapolis and Denver. It found that KCATA had the second-lowest operating expense per passenger trip, while still ranking as the second-most productive agency.

Kansas City Council members discussed the funding gap with KCATA CEO Frank White III at a business session last week. Melissa Robinson, 3rd district councilmember, said many of her constituents use public transportation to get to work. She said she worries that if bus lines get cut, economic mobility will decrease and crime will increase because of poverty.

“If we’re wanting to be real about crime prevention, real about homicide prevention, real about helping people to achieve their economic potential, we should not be cutting their lifeline,” Robinson said.

“I implore us to give our KCATA the same opportunities that we give our men and women in blue, our firefighters. We give them what they need in order to do their jobs. Transit is no different.”

Johnathan Duncan, Crispin Rea, Eric Bunch, and Darrell Curls also spoke against cutting bus lines.

Many of the people who attended each of the city’s three public listening sessions called bus funding a top priority, and urged city council to increase funding for KCATA. The city is set to approve the budget at the next council meeting on March 20.

Council members Rea and Bunch introduced a budget amendment to redirect $2 million from the Public Mass Transportation tax that was meant for LED streetlights to the KCATA.

That money could be enough to save the #25, #27 or #71, each of which cost about $2 million to run. But unless the city council amends the budget to provide more money to KCATA, most of the service cuts would still be necessary.

Kansas City gives nearly all of the 3/8th-cent KCATA sales tax to the transit agency. But about 15 years ago, it began decreasing the amount it gives the agency from its half-cent public mass transportation tax.

In this year’s proposed budget, only about two-thirds of the tax, or about $30.4 million, will go to the KCATA, with the remainder going to traffic safety and infrastructure.

At the business session, Mayor Pro Tem Ryana Parks-Shaw told White she still has “heartache” from route cuts the KCATA made several years ago that affected her district, the 5th, but didn’t seem to save any money in the long run.

“Kansas City taxpayers just continue to add to an inefficient program,” Parks-Shaw said. “Before we even put a bus on the street, we pay $19 million (in administrative costs) off the top. And that’s the piece that is unsustainable.”

White said the agency is considering introducing a “functionally free” fare model, instead of the zero fare model it’s currently using. Under the new system, only those who could afford to pay fares would.

He said that could give KCATA about $10-13 million in revenue, but it would take the agency more than a year to implement.

In the past few years, Independence, Blue Springs, Gladstone, Raytown, Liberty, Parkville and Riverside have cut their funding to the agency. White told city council he was working to bring those municipalities back on the system. Without their funding, Kansas City bears the brunt of the agency’s $19 million in administrative costs.

White said the KCATA is working toward becoming more of a regional transportation authority, as it was created to be, and is seeking more funding from Missouri and Kansas.

“It’s a crisis created by the city,” said Miller, the transit union president. “I believe that the city just wants to privatize the company. KCATA has pretty much exhausted all of its funds. The only thing that they can really start to look at now is reducing service, which is what the city wants them to do.”

The KCATA will hold two public meetings about the proposed cuts. The first will be Thursday from 5-7 p.m. at the East Village Transit Center at 12th and Charlotte Streets. A virtual meeting will be held Friday from 12-1 p.m. over Zoom.