The Star has a story this morning about new bus service on the way for KCK, but it doesn’t go into a lot of specifics.  The city recently recevied grants from the Federal government’s Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality program (CMAQ) to add Sunday service and improve weekday and Saturday service.

A new State Avenue route will link Downtown KCMO with Village West, including stops in Downtown KCK and the Indian Springs Transit Center.  This will be a huge boost for getting folks from homes in the east of KCK to jobs in the west. This new route will run seven days a week, and is temporary solution until the State Avenue MAX line is up and running a couple of years.  It’s something that should have happened years ago when the Speedway was first built, but better late than never.

On Sundays the new route will be suplemented by service on three existing routes: #104 Argentine, #106 Quindaro, and #107 Seventh Street.

As great as the new service is, it is only temporary.  The CMAQ grant is only for the 2009 and 2010 fiscal years.  Then the Federal money goes away and KCK has to find local money to continue it.  It is a pattern that repeats itself often in the metro area – getting Federal grants to start new transit service and then struggling to continue it in the absence of regional transit funding.

The other caveat is that the 2010 money is imaginary.  The current Federal transportation bill runs out in 2009, so the 2010 funding is a big assumption that the next program will include similar CMAQ funding.