KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Kansas City, Missouri, officials broke ground on the KC Streetcar expansion Wednesday, which is expected to be completed in 2025.
The expansion, which will add 3.5 miles of streetcar rail on Main Street, will connect the University of Missouri - Kansas City campus to the River Market.
Mayor Quinton Lucas spoke at the groundbreaking in front of Union Station and said that the last time he spoke at that location was at the parade after the Kansas City Chiefs won the Super Bowl in 2020.
Lucas said he was excited about the turnout of people who attended the groundbreaking.
"Look at the excitement in Kansas City about transportation and infrastructure," Lucas said.
Lucas was joined by the United States Department of Transportation Federal Transit Administration Administrator Nuria Fernandez, who had conversations over the past couple of years with Lucas and other city officials about federal funding for the project.
The FTA awarded KC Streetcar a grant for $174.1 million for the expansion, the largest federal, transit-related grant in the city's history. In total, he project costs $351 million.
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"This is a great day for Kansas City," Fernandez said.
The expansion project will generate about 350 construction jobs with about 280 of those jobs coming from local resources.
The construction will start Wednesday at Pershing Road at Union Station and move south and north from there.
Senior Vice President Bruce Marinchek with Herzog Contracting Corp., one of the companies involved in the construction team, said that the constructors are committed to keeping Main Street open during construction.
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"KC Streetcar constructors are ready to roll," Marinchek said.
Officials at the Wednesday event, signed a commemorative piece of track to mark the ground breaking.
