Kansas City, Missouri – On Friday afternoon, the Kansas City Streetcar Authority got its first out of eight new streetcars for a project to make the line longer by 3.5 miles going south.
These new streetcars are needed for the new part of the line that goes from Union Station all the way to the University of Missouri-Kansas City campus. This new section is expected to start working at the start of 2025. Up until November, they had already put down two-thirds of the tracks needed for this extension.
CAF USA Inc., the company making the streetcars, said it would send over the rest of the streetcars for Kansas City about every four weeks, as mentioned in an announcement by the Streetcar Authority. The streetcar that just arrived is numbered #807, which comes right after the first six, numbered 801 to 806.
Streetcar #807 was shown off for the first time on Friday afternoon, after arriving from Elmira, New York, to Kansas City. People had the chance to see this new vehicle for the first on social media.
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The announcement also shared that each of these streetcars can go both ways on the track, are 77 feet long, weigh 78,000 pounds, and can hold up to 150 people at once.
There’s also another plan to extend the streetcar line by 0.7 miles from the River Market area to Berkley Riverfront. They plan to start this project this year and hope to open it by the end of 2025 or the beginning of 2026.
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The cost to make the streetcar line longer to the south is about $351 million, and the additional small piece to Berkley Riverfront is expected to cost $61.1 million.