Nearly 700 tons of rail is being delivered this week for the Kansas City Streetcar Authority's (KC Streetcar) Main Street extension.
The rail is being delivered in segments, with the first set arriving Jan. 4. Delivery is anticipated to take two weeks, with four trucks per day delivering rail, for a total of 36 deliveries. Once all rail has arrived on site, welding of the rail will begin.
The rail will be stored near the intersection of 27th Street and Main Street where it will be welded into 400-foot sections. During delivery and welding, traffic on Main Street will be temporarily reduced to two lanes, one northbound and one southbound, between 27th Street and Warwick Trafficway. Grand Boulevard will be closed between Main Street and Warwick Trafficway. Main Street and Grand Boulevard will reopen once rail welding is complete in approximately four weeks.
The rail for the Main Street Extension comes from Pueblo, Colo., and has recently been stored at a facility in Kansas City, Kansas. The delivery will include 458 sticks of 115# T Rail. Each rail stick is 80 feet long and weighs 3,100 pounds.
While construction on Main Street has been ongoing for more than a year, official groundbreaking for the KC Streetcar Main Street Extension is expected in the first quarter of 2022. The construction of the project is estimated to take two and a half years with passengers ready to ride in 2025.
Construction is being led by the KC Streetcar Constructors, a joint venture between Herzog Contracting Corp. and Stacy and Witbeck, and supported by Burns & McDonnell and JE Dunn Construction. The project is overseen by the joint partnership of the City of Kansas City, Missouri (KCMO), the KC Streetcar Authority (KCSA) and the Kansas City Area Transportation Authority (KCATA).
The KC Streetcar Main Street Extension is a 3.5-mile extension of the KC Streetcar System that will connect the current southern terminus at Union Station to the University of Missouri – Kansas City at 51st Street and Brookside Boulevard. The extension, which is estimated to cost $351 million, is fully funded with federal Capital Investment Grant funds and new local funding approved through the Transportation Development District.
