Host Michael Mackie sits down with Tom Gerend, Executive Director of KC Streetcar, to discuss the October 24th opening of the extension to the Plaza, the 2026 opening of the River Market Streetcar extension and the impact of the Streetcar for residents, arts lovers and visitors to the area including during the World Cup 2026.
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Michael Mackie: Hi everyone, it’s Michael Mackie here, coming to you from KC Studio. KC Studio and kcstudio.org is the only regional magazine and website entirely devoted to covering all arts all the time. I’m excited to work with KC Studio on this special podcast that will provide valuable insights into how public transit and the World Cup are shaping cultural expression and events in the heart of our city. So thanks for joining us on this month’s stop of KC Studio’s Artful Connections along the Streetcar podcast presented by Arvest Bank and sponsored by TIVOL. We’ll be featuring some of Kansas City’s finest cultural arts and civic organizations each month that are along the recently extended Kansas City streetcar route that now goes from the riverfront to the Country Club Plaza and UMKC. Streetcar riders are now able to hop on the streetcar at any of the stops and ride to and from their favorite exhibits and events throughout the year. So please take a ride with us.
Support for Artful Connections Along the Streetcar comes from Arvest Bank. Arvest Bank believes that financial confidence should be within reach for everyone. Whether you’re just getting started planning for your future or starting a new chapter, we are here to help you plan and meet your goals every step of the way. Because everyone deserves a financial partner who cares. Arvest Bank, we believe. For more information, visit arvest.com or visit one of our 20 locations throughout Kansas City.
Hi everyone, I’m here today with Tom Gerend, Executive Cirector at the Kansas City Streetcar Authority. For those of you that have not experienced the Kansas City Streetcar yet, well, you need to do so. The streetcar is free to ride and is funded with local funds thanks to the voter approved transportation development district. In fact, over 5,500 people ride the route from the River Market to Crown Center every day on average. Also, construction on a line extension from the River Market to the Berkeley Riverfront Park began in 2024 and is scheduled to open in early 2026. You guessed it, right before the 2026 World Cup. Tom, it is great to see you today. Thank you for being here. Okay, so you’ve been leading the charge for all these developments for what, the last 11? How long?
Tom Gerend: Yeah, 11 plus years.
Michael Mackie: 11 plus years. Tom, it’s all happening. It’s all coming to fruition. How does that make you feel?
Tom Gerend: It’s amazing. It’s a vision coming to life. What an opportunity really for our community to sort of watch this journey from planning to construction to implementation. It’s a whole new generation of connectivity for Kansas City and it’s been amazing to watch that transformation from the starter line to now and watch the community embrace it. It’s been fantastic.
Michael Mackie: It has literally been a journey.
Tom Gerend: It has.
Michael Mackie: It has been a journey. Okay, now you just had an exciting week last week with the grand opening of the streetcar extension to UMKC and the Country Club Plaza, and that was held on October 24th. Talk to me about when you started this journey, what did you have in mind? What was the overarching goal to start with?
Tom Gerend: Well, our region had been really fighting to find a way forward on high-capacity regional public transportation for decades. We had had lots of trials and tribulations and failures, and really the start of the streetcar line in 2016 was a demonstration, I like to say a demonstration of the possible. It’s sort of proof of concept. It’s demonstrating that people will ride it, that we can use it, that there will be benefits to businesses and the development. And it would really reshape the nature and the form and the definition of downtown in many ways. And so that spurred, obviously, a larger conversation about how do we extend the benefits and how do we use transit on Main Street to serve as a spine for a regional system, a regional multimodal system. So the vision always had been a bigger system, a bigger line, really running north and south to start that would really serve as a spine to connect routes north of the river, east and west, Johnson County. And we started in 2016. There was great community energy and momentum and we’ve just kept rolling with that momentum to find opportunities to grow the impacts, bring partners to the table, new resources and that’s what’s brought us here today.
Michael Mackie: Support for Artful Connections Along the Streetcar comes from Tivol. For more than a century, Tivol has helped Kansas City mark treasured moments and create cherished memories with fine jewelry of the highest quality. Visit us at our Country Club Plaza or Hawthorne Plaza locations or online at tivol.com. Tivol is proud to be a sponsor of this special podcast and to celebrate our city’s vibrant arts community.
Now, what I want to know is, I guess I really need to know more about how it’s funded because I mean, at the end of the day, that would be a big part of the Kansas City streetcar. So how is it funded?
Tom Gerend: Well, so the Transportation Development District is the primary local mechanism that we’ve used to generate new money. It’s important we’re growing the transit pie with streetcar. This isn’t a reallocation of existing transit resources. We’re bringing new resources in thanks to a voter approved initiative that really represents people along the alignment who are benefiting and using are the ones helping to pay. But importantly, we’re using that new revenue stream to leverage federal money. So between the two projects we’ve constructed and are building over $400 million in capital infrastructure expansion, over $200 million of that is federal money that we’ve been able to go out and get, thanks to the voters in the district supporting this initiative. We’ve been able to leverage their local investment to go to the feds and secure more than a one-to-one return on those dollars with federal resources. And that’s allowed us to build now $400 million of capital expansion, tripling the size of our streetcar system and also–
Michael Mackie: Braggart!
Tom Gerend: And also, in a very short period of time, and then having a sustainable source to fund the operations and maintenance into the future. So we’re super appreciative of the voters and the residents in the district who said, we want this and we’re willing to pay for it. We see the benefits long-term, and it’s really that support that’s allowed us to leverage federal money in Washington, DC and to have a sustainable source to fund this operation going forward. It’s not just about building it, it’s about maintaining it at a high level and having an experience through art and other activations that make this truly and uniquely Kansas City.
Michael Mackie: I want to know stats. I want to know all stats all the time. How many people are on the streetcar on average? What’s the biggest day you’ve had? How long? I want to know the 411.
Tom Gerend: Well, looking through the lens of the starter line operation, not including the Main Street extension, which is bringing a whole new ridership base, we were carrying on average in year one over 6,000 trips a day. And some days we were carrying 15,000 trips–
Michael Mackie: Good Lord.
Tom Gerend: For the NFL draft. And then the Chapelle Roan concert, we carried over 20,000 trips in a single day on the downtown route alone, which represents over a third of the region’s transit trips in total happening right downtown and right on the streetcar line. So as we grow the impact, as we triple the size of the system, as we connect new destinations like UMKC and Westport and Midtown and the riverfront, obviously that’s additional generation, it’s additional ridership and it’s additional connectivity for our community to access all of these amazing destinations.
Michael Mackie: The extension, by the way, congratulations. The extension between the River Parket and the Plaza and UMKC is now a thing. It is now open. Has the reality sunk in yet?
Tom Gerend: A little bit.
Michael Mackie: Okay, good.
Tom Gerend: There’s so much work that goes into making these projects happen. The partnership with the City of Kansas City and the ATA and our Streetcar Authority board, literally a 10-year journey to put together a plan to build support, to finalize a funding strategy and to meet all of the crazy federal requirements and certifications and approvals that are required to get to opening. You spend all this time trying to launch it, and then the day after it’s open, you get to operate and maintain it forever. And so the job changes overnight, it’s a different job. There’s still a lot of work to do, couldn’t be more excited about the connectivity that that extension is bringing to the entire city. This is no longer just a downtown streetcar thing. We are connecting these two large employment centers in the Plaza, in downtown through the densest neighborhoods and all of the cultural attractions up and down Main Street together as part of one unified experience. So now it’s a streetcar for the entire city, and as we continue to grow it, that’ll even be more true.
Michael Mackie: Do you feel like, you started this back in 2017-ish? Do you feel like your vision has now come to life officially?
Tom Gerend: I think this spine between the riverfront and UMKC was fundamental to sort of the broader regional vision. And so yes, it was, the aspiration was, let’s grow the impact from downtown. Let’s go north and south. Let’s create a spine of a regional system that provides a heightened level of connectivity and access. And we’ve always said this is about putting a stake in the ground, that Main Street and that downtown and that Kansas City is the place we want people and jobs to be, and it will serve as a magnet for this city for years to come.
Michael Mackie: There are now more than a dozen stops, including the two new ones. And bottom line, it’s important for the arts community because there are visits to the Unicorn Theater, the Metropolitan Ensemble, the Nelson- Atkins. I mean, the list goes on and on, the Kemper. How is this going to affect the people in a good way? How is this going to affect people who just hop on, who just want to see all the great cultural and arts things that are around our fine city?
Tom Gerend: It’s going to be amazing, right? The connectivity and the synergy between the art institutions and the districts, the Crossroads and the museums, the Warwick Theater just reopened their doors right at Westport Road and Main Street, which is thrilling. So up and down Main Street, there’s activations, there’s cultural attractions, and many of these are places that people don’t necessarily think of top of mind. So having a streetcar connection, seeing them out the window as they’re going past, it says, Hey, I want to check this place out. I want to explore the city in a different way than I have before. We saw that change overnight downtown. When we connected the River Market to the downtown loop and the Crossroads, and Union Station, people started to experience our city in a different way, that really leaned in to these very authentic Kansas City destinations that are the things that make our city great. And we’re adding to that portfolio with obviously the World War I Museum and Midtown and Westport in general. And you mentioned Kemper and the Nelson, and the list goes on and on, and we’re so excited to be able to provide that connectivity for visitors, for residents and for employees who work up and down the line at these locations as well, to provide an access alternative that gives them a very easy and frequent way to get where they need to go.
Michael Mackie: With all these cultural arts events going on, are you going to sort of massage the hours that the streetcar runs on some of these busier days?
Tom Gerend: Well, we have very extended hours already, and with the Main Street extension, we’re starting earlier at five in the morning, and we’re at–
Michael Mackie: Five in the morning.
Tom Gerend: And we’re running until midnight and one in the morning on Friday and Saturday. So we already capture pretty much all of the operating hours of all the cultural institutions that we’re connecting, but we surely do increase capacity, the number of cars on the route as we have big events. The Plaza Art Fair, think about all of the things, the Crossroads First Fridays, we add capacity to the alignment to ensure that we can maintain the capacity needed to move all the people, and that it’s a great experience for folks. So we’re leaning into transit as a sort of tier one, level one opportunity for access to these venues, and many of them were not connected this way in the past, and we’re really excited about that.
Michael Mackie: Fess up. How often do you ride your own streetcar?
Tom Gerend: I’m on, I wouldn’t say every day, multiple times a week. I’m on, was riding around yesterday and yeah, it’s an amazing asset and connector.
Michael Mackie: Do you look at it with a critical eye or do you just get on and sometimes just enjoy it like the rest of us, the rest of us pedestrians?
Tom Gerend: My family gives me a hard time about taking photos and texting staff when I’m observing things that aren’t exactly perfect. And our staff has a very high standard and we have expectations and we want the experience to be and the service to be as good as it possibly can be. So it’s not just me. Our team is on the ball and proactive and trying to make sure that we can make this the best experience for our passengers as possible. So.
Michael Mackie: Who is riding the streetcar? I mean, who’s the majority? Are they locals, are they tourists? Does that grow and evolve every day? Is it going to evolve? What are your thoughts on that?
Tom Gerend: So 95%, believe it or not, of our riders are Kansas City regional residents that between employees downtown that are about a third of our trips are connected to employment. We have downtown and Midtown now. Obviously, those are major residential neighborhoods that we’re connecting. So every day, goods and services, grocery store, bank, dry cleaners, service trips, and then surely entertainment and regional attractions. So downtown, whether it be the City Market or T-Mobile Center or Union Station, and my friend George Costello and all of his great attractions that he has access to, clearly they’re regional generators and not just of Kansas City, but even outside of Kansas City and the metro. And we see that on the weekends in particular where our downtown ridership would sometimes triple from 5,000 to 15,000 because of downtown activations where it’s big festivals, or I mentioned shows at T-Mobile or the Kauffman Center for Performing Arts or the City Market Saturdays. Downtown gets flooded with folks and they use our streetcar system and it’s great.
Michael Mackie: Do you think that this is going to enable, or I should say, do you think this is going to encourage people to visit more cultural attractions because you can’t help but get dropped off right in front of Union Station, right in front of some theaters?
Tom Gerend: Yeah, I think 100%. And we saw this downtown, and we’re seeing this in Midtown. We have an art museum stop at 45th Street, and so people who are staying in hotels downtown can now ride the streetcar to 45th Street. They can take The Arterie, right, the art walk that’s connecting the–
Michael Mackie: I see what you did there. The ART-erie.
Tom Gerend: The Arterie, which is the branded connection between our streetcar stop and the Kemper Contemporary Art Museum, KCAI and the Nelson to experience all of those things as part of an experience in downtown, right? Where people are coming in, whether they live there or they’re visitors, they don’t need to hop in a car, right? They can take a five-minute streetcar ride to the next destination and explore a whole new part of Kansas City.
Michael Mackie: Oh, I can’t even tell you how much I used to hate parking downtown and now I don’t have to do it. And it brings me don’t so much joy. I can’t even tell you. I’m putting you on the spot. I know this wasn’t in the questionnaire, but do you have a favorite stop or a favorite arts locale along the way? And don’t feel obligated to say Union Station, because that’s what I would always say, but yeah.
Tom Gerend: Yeah. I mean, Union Station’s been the heartbeat of our system. They’ve been a third of our ridership, and you’re at the connection to all of the cultural resources that they have in the events, the legacy events. If you think about the NFL draft and the Super Bowl parades and all of the things, Union Station’s been front and center. My personal favorite probably after Union Station would be the City Market because of its sort of history in Kansas City, its connection to the river. We have a family tradition, every Saturday is market days and going to the City Market to pick up goods and enjoying the people and the pedestrian-friendly nature of the neighborhood. That’s a quaint little neighborhood that’s connected in directly downtown, and now totally accessible with the streetcar. And you always find little different attractions, different installations there that are fun to explore.
Michael Mackie: I do love me some farmer’s market. I do love my Saturday mornings, and now I don’t have to worry about parking ever again.
Tom Gerend: You don’t.
Michael Mackie: Support for Artful Connections Along the Streetcar comes from Arvest Bank. Arvest Bank believes that financial confidence should be within reach for everyone. Whether you’re just getting started planning for your future or starting a new chapter, we are here to help you plan and meet your goals every step of the way. Because everyone deserves a financial partner who cares. Arvest Bank. We believe. For more information, visit arvest.com or visit one of our 20 locations throughout Kansas City.
Best day ever. Okay. World Cup. Are you ready? Are we ready? Are you nervous? What are you?
Tom Gerend: We’re so excited about this. We’re excited to be at the Center of Attention Fan Fest. We’ll be at World War I Museum and Memorial grounds. We will be the primary connector of the entire city to the Fan Fest location. We know there’s going to be 25 to 30,000 people every day there for a month, as that is activated for match days and non-match days, for watch parties and the like. And so if you think about, again, the opportunity to leverage a six and a half mile transit spine with free trips to Midtown, to the arts exhibits, to the hotels, to all of the attractions that Kansas City has to offer, we’re really excited. So we’ve been part of the planning team. We’ve been working for well over a year on service surge planning and capacity planning and safety and security.
Michael Mackie: Service surge planning. That sounds very official, Tom.
Tom Gerend: Yeah, so well, we’ve got to be able to, we’ve got 600,000 people coming in wanting to access all of these destinations, and we want to make sure that we have enough staff, enough streetcar service on the street to meet the needs. And so lots of great work happening by the team in preparation. And I feel great about our ability to do what we need to do and be prepared. And I would also say that the plans that we have formed to triple the size of the system were in place well in advance of the World Cup bid becoming a reality, but were instrumental to it coming to Kansas City. So our streetcar connection and what it means for access to Fan Fest and all of the things was an instrumental aspect of being able to bring the World Cup here, even though those plans were in the early stages. And so we’re executing on time, on budget and really excited for the World Cup and all of our visitors to experience that expanded Kansas City presence via the Kansas City Streetcar.
Michael Mackie: Support for Artful Connections Along the Streetcar comes from Tivol. For more than a century, Tivol has helped Kansas City mark treasured moments and create cherished memories with fine jewelry of the highest quality. Visit us at our Country Club Plaza or Hawthorne Plaza locations or online at tivol.com. Tivol is proud to be a sponsor of this special podcast and to celebrate our city’s vibrant arts community.
Visitors are going to be blessed and highly favored because they can just ride that thing wherever they want to go, and there’s so much more to see that they probably wouldn’t have been able to experience.
Tom Gerend: That’s exactly right. I mean, all of the destinations, all of the neighborhoods are planning activations, community festivals, all of the things. It’s going to be a vibrant, exciting time. And we’re going to be on the world stage and the streetcar system and our connectivity will be front and center to that.
Michael Mackie: It’s literally going to be here before you know it. And do you feel the buzz building behind the scenes? You have all the background on it, so…
Tom Gerend: Yeah, definitely. Right. Everybody that’s close to it is counting down days. We’ve been a little distracted. We’re spending a lot of time working, but our core mission is we wanted to deliver the Main Street extension on time and on budget, which we did. And we still have to open our riverfront extension to Berkeley Riverfront Park and CPKC stadium, which will be an integral sort of component to the broader World Cup program and sites and locations and attractions. So we’ve got more work to do to get our system built out, but we’re really proud to be on schedule and to be really leaned into as an instrumental point of connectivity for the entirety of the festival.
Michael Mackie: Let’s talk a little bit about the Art in the Loop. It’s been going on since 2014. You’ve sort of partnered, they’ve partnered with you to sort of tie in with basically outdoor exhibitions of temporary public artworks. Tell me a little bit about that and what that is going to bring to the table once winter is over.
Tom Gerend: Yeah, so first, let me start by saying, when we started this project back in 2016, our board was very explicit. They said, we want this to not just be a transit connector, but to be an experience that our city can be proud of, to be something iconic and to lean into community partnerships and bring people to the table and use our platform to help and grow and support the arts. And so really in 2014 and 15 when we launched this, we started looking at deploying different art programs ourselves, curating art, temporary art, using our streetcar assets like our shelters and our vehicles. And we found that the Art in the Loop was already in place and doing great work downtown, and it was a perfect partnership. We could lean into their process, we could support their efforts, we could help them grow their program, and we could use our streecar assets like our shelters and our vehicles as a canvas for temporary art in our community up and down the streetcar line.
So since we’ve started service every year, we’ve been a lead partner of Art in the Loop, financially supporting and supporting through use of our assets to use art activations to make downtown more beautiful, to lean into arts, to support local arts. And it’s been such a win-win partnership for us. So as we grow the route, we’re fully planning on growing the partnership with Art in the Loop, growing the use of our assets in Midtown and the partnership up and down the route to help tell the story of art and the connectivity of our treetcar to art institutions through their programming and through ours. And what an amazing opportunity. It’s been successful and we’re growing the route, we’re growing the destinations, and we’re connecting, again, I would say the most high-profile art institutions in the city together through this unified experience.
Michael Mackie: I took a mural tour, which was sort of literally off the beaten path mural tour, and that was probably the most fun thing that I did because I didn’t even know that was a thing. And it was so convenient, literally to hop on and hop off and see all the artwork splashed across countless, I mean, I didn’t realize there were so many murals in the city.
Tom Gerend: Yeah, they’re up and down Main Street. We have them all over downtown and —
Michael Mackie: Some of them are tucked away. And I like that too.
Tom Gerend: And I think you’ll find people, and we’ve already seen folks creating their own tours off the streetcar line where, and we’ve seen the partners at the 45th Street stop with the Arterie route that they’ve created to help provide connectivity and providing experience is very explicit and user focus and helping to elevate and use art as a connector. And I think we’re going to see more and more of that–
Michael Mackie: I think you’re right.
Tom Gerend:
As this operation really becomes more mature and people lean into the value of this connectivity. How do we pull people off of Main Street? How do we show some of these unique carrots of art in our city and kind of connect the dots, whether it be self-guided tours or folks who are leading their own tours, great opportunities to showcase our city in that way.
Michael Mackie: Oh, and I could eat my way through all the great restaurants too. Don’t even get me started. So city leaders have just sort of started snooping around what’s next, the possibility of bringing it to the 18th and Vine area, which would obviously connect the Negro League’s Baseball Museum, and the Jazz Museum. Literally the list goes on and on. What’s on your wishlist? If you were a betting man, I’m just spitballing, where?
Tom Gerend: So we have three active efforts right now just for backdrop.
Michael Mackie: Three. Okay.
Tom Gerend: We’re looking at 18th and Vine. We’re looking at north of the river into North Kansas City and we’re looking at Midtown east-west. If you think about Linwood and 39th Street, east-west connections, we built a spine north-south, and now it’s time to grow ourselves —
Michael Mackie: Okay.
Tom Gerend: East-west. And as the regional planning guy, which is my background, I would say Regency do this, well, do more than one thing at a time. Right now we’re building north to the riverfront and just completed south to UMKC. There’s no reason we can’t go over the river and east west as part of a bigger city plan. And so we know our city’s evolving. It’s changing. It always will be. And we should be front and center on thinking about how do we want to grow Kansas City? What’s the role of transit connectivity in growing us in a sustainable and healthy way? And let’s lean into that opportunity. So the success of downtown and the recent opening of the Main Street extension has created such an energy and momentum that we have partners helping to now advocate for these expansions that we’ve never had before. And so I’m totally optimistic that we’re not done, that we’re just getting started and we have more work to do.
Michael Mackie: I am optimistic that you are optimistic. That makes me happy. But let’s talk timelines. Again, I’m putting you on the spot. If you were a betting man, if we got another one up and rolling five years, three…
Tom Gerend: Downtown, we delivered in five to six years, which was record time, Main Street extension because of the federal programs that we used were more onerous. And it’s taken about eight years for that project to go. And so eight years is in the life of a city, it feels like a long time. It’s really a short period of time, but it’s what it takes to deliver these generational projects. We like to say it’s not about the streetcar, it’s about the city that we’re creating for the next generation. It’s about 10 years, 20 years, 50 years from now. That’s what we’re investing in with streetcar extensions, like the recently open Main Street extension and the Riverfront extension. We are laying a whole new transportation groundwork and framework for how we’re going to grow our city into the future. So, feels like a long time, but cities and regions who are really good at this have a vision for their city, for their region, for the next 50 years, and transit and transportation and investments directly support that vision.
Michael Mackie: I know that the Chappell Roan concert was a few months ago, but as far as I’m concerned, the city is still in Chappell Roan afterglow. Tell me about that particular weekend. First of all, you wrapped an entire streetcar in pink. I want to know all the things. I’m a Chappell Roan stan.
Tom Gerend: Yeah, so they reached out, Chappell Roan’s team reached out to us and had seen wraps and executions of art that we’ve done elsewhere, and we have a sponsorship program, and they paid to wrap a streetcar, which was awesome. And it was a win-win partnership and people love to see it. Our operator said the energy downtown operating that car was palpable, that the waves and the cheers and the excitement that it brought to people. We carried over 20,000 trips each day of the concert downtown, which you think about the economic impact of that, that many people downtown, not just for the show, but going to restaurants and businesses, the energy, the enthusiasm, the excitement. Again, 30,000 people. We carried 20,000 trips to the venue. A large proportion of the people who attended those concerts went via public transportation. And 10 years ago, you would’ve never thought in Kansas City that would be possible. And so we’ve proven that it is possible. We’re growing the network and we’re optimistic and hopeful that events like that continue to find Kansas City an attractive national destination, landmark destination. We’ve proven that we can do it at a high level, and we’re excited for future opportunities like the World Cup and beyond.
Michael Mackie: Two summers ago, there was a Barbie Streetcar. Last year, or this past summer was the Pink Pony Club. Is there going to be a pink theme? What do we have for 2026?
Tom Gerend: Yeah, we don’t have anything on the radar stream.
Michael Mackie: Not yet!
Tom Gerend: But you never know. You never know.
Michael Mackie: You never know. What else haven’t we talked about.? What else did you want to bring up to our listeners and to our viewers today that’s sort of top of mind?
Tom Gerend: Well, I first want to say that obviously the stakeholders who’ve helped to support this effort, it’s really, like I said, a generational decade-long effort to grow this system up and down the route. City leadership, it’s been an amazing synergy and partnership to help make progress, to grow this system. And doing big things is hard. They cost money, they take a long time. There’s not a lot of patience for long-term planning in this day and age. And so having the staying power to sort of see the plans to reality to make our city a better place is really uplifting. Kansas City should be proud of the streetcar system, and they should be proud of the partnerships that have come together all over the place to help make these things happen. It’s not one person, right? There’s boards, there’s staff, there’s consultants, there’s city leadership, and it takes everybody believing that our city is worth it, that we can do big things, that Kansas City deserves the best. We deserve the best in art and entertainment. We deserve the best in public transportation, and let’s continue to push our city forward and do great things. So I think that is what everybody should take away from this.
Michael Mackie: Please tell me that you just take a minute and pat yourself in the back every once in a while because the whole thing has just been amazing.
Tom Gerend: Well, I get more credit than I deserve. I mean, the number of people that are behind the scenes and really leading the charge on all of the details, there’s hundreds of folks who are doing the work. And I love when we’re with staff, and obviously we’ve got a hundred operators and maintainers out running the system every day, delivering that experience to people. They’re ambassadors for Kansas City, they’re frontline ambassadors, and they’re some of the first people that out-of-town folks interact with as they’re downtown exploring downtown. And couldn’t be more proud of the team that we pulled together and the passion that people have for this city and for the role that we get to play, the honor that we have, and doing what we do on a daily basis to be a part of that. It’s been amazing.
Michael Mackie: I am so tickled that you joined us today. Thank you for being our third guest on Artful Connections Along the Streetcar podcast. And thank you just in general for being such a great leader in the expansion of Kansas City’s public transportation. We appreciate it. And here’s to 2026 and 2027 and 2028, and the list goes on and on.
Tom Gerend: Well, thank you for having me. It was great.
Michael Mackie: Thank you so much for joining us today on our monthly stop of the Artful Connections Along the Streetcar podcast presented by Arvest Bank and sponsored by TIVOL. You can find this podcast and our future stops wherever you find your favorite podcasts. As a reminder, this is Michael Mackie for KC Studio, Kansas City’s only full-time magazine, website and e-newsletter with professional journalists covering the cultural arts region. Go to kcstudio.org to check out all our upcoming arts events, our latest podcasts and to sign up now to receive your free – yes, just like the streetcar – your free magazine, six times a year in your mailbox, or to receive our weekly newsletters at kcstudio.org/subscribe. Thanks for riding with us during this month’s episode.
