Transit Briefs: KC Streetcar, Green Line LRT, Finch West LRT
KC Streetcar
Missouri’s KC Streetcar Authority on Dec. 10 reported record ridership for November 2025, “demonstrating that the expanded 5.7-mile rail route from the River Market to UMKC is attracting unprecedented demand for fare-free, frequent, and reliable public transit.” With 341,922 KC Streetcar passenger trips last month, ridership was up 2.5x from November 2024, it said. The month also delivered the single highest ridership day of 2025, with 19,761 trips on Nov. 22, and a daily average of 11,397 passenger trips. 2025 year-to-date total ridership came in at 1,799,708 trips.
According to the KC Streetcar Authority, the 3.5-mile Main Street Extension drew nearly 35,000 passenger trips over the three-day opening weekend, starting Oct. 24.
Average weekday ridership in the weeks prior to Oct. 24 was approximately 4,000 passenger trips. Once the extension launched, that average jumped to 10,000 trips, according to KC Streetcar Authority, which noted that weekend ridership also grew, with Saturdays and Sundays each seeing 14,000 trips on average.
Travel patterns have also changed since the opening of the extension, KC Streetcar Authority reported. “The KC Streetcar has consistently been busy Fridays through Sundays,” it said. “With the expanded route, service is experiencing sustained peak periods throughout the week, Monday through Thursday, 11:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m.”
To keep pace, KC Streetcar Authority said it has expanded service from a three-to-four streetcar rotation serving downtown to seven to eight streetcars operating daily on the full system. During peak periods, up to nine streetcars run to reduce wait times and maintain reliability, it noted.
“The response to the expanded streetcar system has been extraordinary,” KC Streetcar Authority Executive Director Tom Gerend said. “Ridership has already exceeded system forecasts and is a testament to the value of this newfound connectivity. We fully expect significant ridership growth as we move into 2026 and further demonstrate the value, opportunity, and convenience the KC Streetcar can bring.”
The Riverfront Streetcar Station is now under construction. Upon opening next year, it will become the new northern terminus of the KC Streetcar system. The station will include the CPKC Pavilion and serve as the “front door” to the Berkley Riverfront, CPKC Stadium, and future development.
Calgary’s Green Line LRT
“After more than a decade of planning, city officials are eyeing a 2031 opening for the Green Line light rail transit (LRT) project,” CBC News reported Dec. 10. “City administration presented an update on the project to Calgary city council on Tuesday [Dec. 9] saying the southeast portion of the line remains on track. That runs from Shepherd to the Event Centre/Grand Central Station near Victoria Park” (see map above).
Construction is “making significant progress since groundbreaking in June, [Green Line LRT Director Wendy] Tynan” told the council. “All of the city’s scheduling plans and approved funding have been built with the 2031 completion date in mind, she” said, according to the media outlet.
CBC News reported that Green Line LRT plans “were significantly scaled back, after the province [of Alberta] initially pulled its funding last year. Since 2015, [C]$1.6 billion has been spent on the Green Line. The current project has seen a combined [C]$6.25 billion in funding from all three levels of government [City of Calgary, Province of Alberta, and Government of Canada].”
While the entire project is slated to “extend from 160th Avenue N. to Seton in the southeast, Tynan said,” according to CBC News, “the city [for now] is focused on Phase 1, which includes the southeast portion as well as a downtown segment.”
Work on the downtown segment—from Event Center/Grand Central Station to Seventh Avenue S.W—“is moving slower,” as the “province’s proposed elevated track alignment has proved controversial,” the media outlet reported. “The city is in the process of assessing the potential costs, risks and benefits of the elevated track system, city administration told council, with plans to start construction in 2027.”
Finch West LRT
Toronto Transit Commission Chairman and Toronto City Councilor Jamaal Myers “says he’ll be addressing complaints from riders who have claimed slow travel times aboard the newly opened Finch West LRT — also known as [TTC] Line 6,” according to the Toronto Sun.
Myers spoke during a Dec. 10 news conference and told reporters he would share the complaints at the TTC Board meeting being held later in the day.
“I’ll be putting forward my two motions to ensure Line 6 and Line 5 (the yet-to-open Eglinton LRT) and our entire streetcar network operate the way rapid transit should, which is, of course, fast,” said Myers, according to the Toronto Sun. “Riders are right to expect better … If our [systems] move too slowly, riders will stay in their cars and congestion will worsen and the billions of dollars invested in public transit will not deliver the expected results. This is unacceptable.”
Myers said he will ask “TTC, the city of Toronto, Metrolinx and the province [of Ontario] to explore transit signal priority, higher service frequency, and ‘review outdated policies that unnecessarily restrict LRT speeds on Lines 5 and 6,’” according to the media outlet. “‘These are all practical, achievable, near-term solutions. Why I’m optimistic is there is political will to get these things moving faster,’ Myers added.’”
TTCriders spokesperson Andrew Pulsifer “told the Toronto Sun on Tuesday he received reports that it took 50 minutes for riders to get from one end of the 10.3-kilometre [6.4-mile] line to the other with buses sometimes passing the LRT.”
“The first media advisory (from Metrolinx, dated Sept. 20, 2024) said it would be around 34 minutes, I believe, from one end to the other, which already in itself seemed a bit long,” the Toronto Sun reported Pulsifer as saying. A TTC spokesperson on Dec. 8 “said the one-end-to-the-other-end trip time in morning/afternoon rush hour was scheduled to be 46 minutes,” according to the Sun.
