A friend called me the other night. Fox4KC had just aired a story about the opening date of the latest Kansas City streetcar extension. They put the cost of the 3.5-mile route at $352 million. “Is that right,” they asked?
That certainly is the number Fox4KC reported. And that number does come from the Streetcar Authority itself.
At over $100 million per mile, Kansas City may have just built the most expensive streetcar system in the country. A quick search online seems to support this (see table below). While this places the KC streetcar extension as the most expensive of 2025, we will only hold that title for a short while. California’s Orange Country streetcar—dubbed the Trolley to Nowhere by our friends at the California Policy Center)—will blow past our cost-per-mile when it opens in 2026.
Randal O’Toole, who authored a Show-Me Institute policy study on various streetcar proposals in Kansas City, told me “the average for streetcars is about $91 million a mile.” Although he added, “Seattle wants to connect two streetcar lines together at a cost of $220 million a mile.” So maybe Orange County’s record will itself be short-lived.
Recall that the streetcar system has done nothing to drive up assessed market value of the properties along the route above that of the county as a whole. It has had no measurable economic impact—despite the continuing and unsubstantiated claims made by streetcar supporters.
At best, we in Kansas City can—for a short while—lay claim to the most expensive system in the country. Yay!
