Like many cities across the country, Kansas City, Missouri’s, transportation systems face competing demands of frequency, coverage, and sustainable funding. A car-centric region navigating a bistate, multicounty transit system and legacies of highway development that split the city’s neighborhoods along racial and income lines, Kansas City has made impressive strides in serving communities’ multimodal transportation needs. But service is not equitably distributed: a 2024 study found that 82 percent of surveyed people said a lack of transportation makes it hard to handle daily needs, and 66 percent noted there are no transit stops near places they want to go. Facilitating access to key employment, education, health, and recreational destinations can foster opportunities for upward economic mobility—the ability to achieve economic success, feel a sense of dignity and belonging in community, and exercise power and autonomy in one’s life.

This report examines the state of multimodal transportation in the bistate Kansas City region, identifying ways to advance upward economic mobility alongside transportation strategies. Drawing on qualitative research and interviews with local transit, policy, and nonprofit leaders in Kansas City and in three peer cities—Cincinnati, Ohio; Columbus, Ohio; and Louisville, Kentucky—we find that the following:

• Pairing transit initiatives with infrastructure investments can bolster public support for transportation funding. In Cincinnati, a campaign to increase the sales tax for transit drew public support by committing 25 percent of the new tax funding to road and sidewalk repairs, ensuring investments benefited transit riders, pedestrians, and car users alike in a mix of suburban and urban neighborhoods.
• Partnerships between transit agencies and anchor institutions can connect riders to key destinations for upward mobility. In Cincinnati, partnerships between the bus operator and local universities and hospitals are connecting people to classes and health appointments, helping people reach destinations that bolster well-being and advance economic opportunity while also growing a dedicated ridership base.
• Robust community engagement can ensure large-scale transportation and infrastructure projects respond to diverse community needs. Louisville’s Broadway All the Way plan will transform a major corridor in the city, spanning business, recreation, and residential areas. The city’s intensive community engagement process is ensuring the redevelopment meets the needs of motorists, transit riders, pedestrians, and bicyclists across different sections of the corridor.

With a contract renewal between the city and its public transportation authority in summer 2025, plans for upcoming county-level transit funding ballot initiatives, tourism for the 2026 FIFA World Cup, and forthcoming updates to walkability plans, Kansas City is well-positioned to expand its transportation commitments through an upward mobility lens. Promoting regional economic mobility requires cross-sector collective action from the following stakeholders:

• Transit authorities, policymakers, and the metropolitan planning organization can formalize a bistate, multicounty, cross-sector coalition to regularly strategize on transportation needs and economic development opportunities. The metropolitan planning organization, along with existing networks of transportation advocates and leaders like the Transportation for All Coalition and the Kansas City Regional Transit Alliance, could be springboards for deepening ongoing regional forums.
• Philanthropy and other funders can support backbone nonprofit, policy, and advocacy organizations that inform transportation and infrastructure policy development and implementation, manage community resources like bike shares, and engage community members on a shared vision of multimodal transportation access that contributes to upward mobility.
• Policymakers, transit leaders, and nonprofits can partner to help people access free transit. As Kansas City prepares to phase out free bus fares and introduce a system requiring verification for free rides in 2026, these organizations should partner on community outreach and program enrollment to ensure people with low incomes can readily access free transit.
• Employers and workforce development organizations can explore partnerships to support employee transportation to work, such as piloting expanded bus routes to job hubs. These groups can also call for greater local and state government funding for workforce-focused transit, such as Ohio’s Workforce Mobility Partnership Program.
• Policymakers can invest in housing, shelters, and community safety. People experiencing homelessness may congregate on buses when they struggle to access safe shelter. Investing in affordable housing, shelters, social services, and public safety to meet holistic economic and well-being needs can alleviate pressures on transit systems and nonprofit providers.