My first time seeing Kansas City’s streetcar roll by was a little like watching Doc Brown’s DeLorean from Back to the Future suddenly appearing in 1955. The American Midwest, with its wide, valley-like streets and cartoonishly huge cars, feels like no home for such a jarringly European sight.
But Kansas City isn’t like most Midwest cities. Not only has this sleek tram been trundling through downtown KC (as locals call it) for almost 10 years, its 2.2-mile track is in the process of being extended (almost doubling in length) and – best of all – riding is completely free of charge. Sure, it’s not the New York subway, but this is also no white elephant. And while it won’t put Kansas City on the map in the same way Taylor Swift’s appearances at Kansas City Chiefs NFL games have, it’s a sign of a surprisingly progressive city on the rise and one that will be hosting six matches at the 2026 Fifa World Cup.
Straddling the state line between Missouri and Kansas, the city was a vital trading post and frontier crossroads on the mighty Missouri River when it was founded in the 1830s. A century later, the city developed an anarchic reputation under mob boss Tom Pendergast as prohibition gripped the US and its smoke-filled jazz clubs and brooding speakeasies attracted celebrities, politicians, misfits and deviants.
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Today, KC is a sprawling metropolis of 500,000, with its stocky skyline a hodgepodge of featureless glass towers and gorgeous Art Deco skyscrapers under a dome of great Midwest sky. Bright blue mornings at my riverside hotel are often pierced by the distant horn of incoming freight trains. It’s a nostalgic sound, like the howl of a lost America as it thunders past languid cornfields and lonely telephone lines. The grandiose Union Station, completed in 1914, welcomed its last passenger train in the late 1980s and has since been converted into an airy gathering space with a science museum, cinema, restaurant and other attractions.
But this repurposed station is just one of many reasons for visitors to attend games in budget-friendly Kansas City, away from the…
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