KC Light Rail

As Kansas City gets ready to finalize its budget that will unnecessarily slash KCATA funding by about $7 million — go ahead, ask our "transit-friendly" city council where that money is actually going! — the rest of the nation's transit operators continue to feel the pain as well. The Wall Street Journal takes time out to recap the heavy-hitters: New York, DC, and San Francisco. In New York, the situation is so dire that riders are call most proposals a "doomsday". Since we have yet to secure a final budget number, it could weeks or months before KC knows the exact impacts of the budget reduction.

As we've mentioned previously, operating assistance did not make it into the final stimulus package. Does it make sense to dangle capital funding in front of agencies that are simultaneously making service cuts and laying off staff? Will Congress wait for the nation's jobless to try and get to work, once they do find a job, to figure out that this is a problem?