Figuring out transit for World Cup in KC is no small task. Take it from the guy in charge

Getting hundreds of thousands of visitors where they need to go when Kansas City hosts the men’s World Cup soccer tournament in 2026 will require many buses.

Lots and lots of buses — far more than the RideKC system has in its fleet that carts locals from place to place on your average Tuesday.

Different kinds of buses, too. Big, Greyhound-style motorcoaches. Cozy shuttle buses and conveyances of all sizes in between.

The folks in charge of preparations for our part in this global event and biggest sporting event in the city’s history know this: They need to lease 200 or more buses to accommodate the teams, support staff and fans who will need ways to get around this far-flung metro area during those four weeks that the tournament will be in town from mid-June to mid-July of 2026.

If that isn’t Job One, then it’s gotta be right up there, says Jason Sims, who as transportation director fills one of the most important positions on the KC2026 organizational chart.

“We need a minimum of 200 buses, and we’ll have the ability to surge in either direction,” Sims said in a rare interview recently. Rare in that he’s pretty busy these days and has only a few minutes to spare before heading off to another in a series of endless meetings.

“It will be a mix,” he said of that temporary bus fleet, but what the mix will look like is still unclear. “How many motor coaches, how many shuttles?”

“We’re going to be moving spectators from a lot of different places and different types of buses will be more economical and efficient depending on where we’re moving people.”

But securing buses from the limited supply that is out there — keep in mind that many if not most of the other 15 World Cup host cities in North America will also be competing for transit vehicles — is only one of many challenges.

Moving parts

Sims and the team he’s leading have lots to worry about between now and when the finished plan is due the first quarter of 2026. (That will leave them a few months to work out the kinks before the first match on June 16 of that year.)

They’ll need to line up more rental cars than are usually found on the lots at the airport and suburban locations. More scooters, e-bikes and park-and-ride sites.

They’ll need to coordinate with local mass transit agencies like the Kansas City Area Transportation Authority and KCStreetcar. Talk with other local officials, coordinate with the KC2026 security team and coax the state highway departments in Kansas and Missouri to go easy on road construction during that period to avoid slowdowns and detours.

And there are even more moving parts to consider, but Sims is confident that KC2026 and its consultants will pull it off.

“Because we’ve never hosted an event like this,” Sims said, “it’s going to be a complex process, and it’s going to take really some great strategic planning. And through the strategic planning, I believe that we’re open to all types of innovative traffic solutions so that we can deliver what we need to have an efficient, a safe transportation system for not only spectators, but for our local residents.”

Who is Jason Sims?

His name may be unfamiliar, but you surely are acquainted with some of Sims’ work if you get around town even only a little.

Those Kansas City Scout messaging signs about road conditions on the local interstates? You can thank Sims. He had a key role in the design, implementation and management of the system that for two decades has alerted motorists to accidents, slowdowns and the ETA to their destinations along 300 miles of local highways.

“Scout is very unique and has positioned me for this opportunity, because it’s bi-state, it’s regional transportation, and I was brought in to lead the operations, and then led the project for about a decade for MoDOT,” he said.

Sims went on to become a vice president at a large national traffic management consulting firm. He represents Wyandotte County on the board that oversees the Kansas City Area Transportation Authority, and this summer was hired to head the KC2026 committee’s transportation planning efforts.

Bringing in bus experts

Working with him on the mobility plan are two large, local engineering firms — HNTB and Burns and McDonnell — along with Maryland-based Transportation Management Services, which was a key partner in transportation planning for the 2022 World Cup in Qatar.

According to TMS, the firm worked for three years with a Qatari company to create a transportation system for a tournament played entirely in that nation on the Arabian Peninsula.

It included more than 3,000 buses, more than 800 of which were electric, along with 6,500 drivers and more than 2,900 people on the operations staff.

The task in Kansas City is a lot smaller, as Qatar hosted all 64 matches at eight stadiums in five cities. Whereas KC hosts six matches, which will range from two to six days apart, and will all be played at Arrowhead.

Sims said the company’s expertise will be key to Kansas City’s success.

“We want to be the first city to secure our bus procurement,” he said. “That’s why it’s very important that TMS was brought on for global expertise, because they do bus procurements, and they do the bus procurement analysis that we need to be able to go and execute leasing the right amount of buses and the type of buses that we need.”

The other firms will help in other areas, such as scheduling, wayfinding (signs, for instance), arranging for the park-and-ride lots, etc.

Long-lasting impact?

Sims hopes that whatever the World Cup effort produces, it will have a long-lasting impact on an improved area transportation system. It’s too early to know for sure what form that will take.

But separately, the KCATA recently completed a study looking at what it would take to establish permanent express bus service between Kansas City International Airport and downtown. Currently a single bus runs once an hour each way.

Johnson County is eyeing bus service between Overland Park and KCI, and an expanded streetcar system should be operational months before soccer players line up on the pitch at Arrowhead.

“There have been many infrastructure projects planned that will benefit the local residents as the World Cup leaves,” Sims said. “I would look at this as the World Cup is an opportunity for us to be able to put a deadline on things that will benefit local residents for many decades to come.”

And with his own deadline approaching, Sims had to say goodbye. In roughly 600 days, the World Cup will be about to start. With all that’s left to do, KC2026’s transportation plan had better be tested and ready to go.

He promised to keep us posted until then.

“I’d love to give you an update every three or four months to let you know where we’re at and let you know how much progress we’ve made,” he said.

Mark your calendar.