06-18-2016, 05:58 PM
After following the construction of the Kansas City Streetcar project, I got to ride it today! We're on a big Midwest US road trip (2700 km and counting) right now, and one of our stops is Kansas City. This is a great little system that came in on-time and under-budget, and is heavily used. Every train I saw today was packed. It connects Kansas City's (absolutely massive!) Union Station with their thriving Riverfront District. The line uses CAF Urbos3 trams, which have the same type of fixed-bogie configuration that our Bombardier FLEXITY trams will have (just 2 fewer modules). The line does not run in a dedicated ROW, so traffic does have to wait and gets hung up a bit... but they have maintained a massive amount of (free) parking all along the entire route, so I think that's a very fair compromise.
Seeing how well the system works here makes me that much more excited for opening day for ion!
Seeing how well the system works here makes me that much more excited for opening day for ion!
...it's the little things. @kcstreetcar @RideKCTransit @kclightrail Cc: @chrisjamesdrew @rideIONrt #LightRail #KC pic.twitter.com/WjBV3L4xjO
— iain (@Canardiain) June 18, 2016