Draft at the Station – Wednesday Blog by Seán Thomas Kane
The following post is a transcript of the audio from the podcast episode this week. I strongly advise you listen to this one rather than just reading it. Thank you, and enjoy!
“I’m at Independence Station, the only person here, the station house is locked, looks like it’s been abandoned for a while. I’m about 50 minutes early for my train, nothing here, no seats. We’ll see how this adventure goes!”
That was on Friday, 28 April 2023 just after 12:30 pm on a cloudy but calm day in Independence, Missouri, one of the eastern suburbs of Kansas City. I got a ride out there so I could try taking Amtrak’s Missouri River Runner service into Kansas City’s Union Station located just south of Downtown. Normally, arriving at Union Station is a moment of awe and wonder at the grandeur of that Beaux Arts station, built in 1914, one of the great reminders of the time when trains were the fastest and most comfortable way to cross North America. Last weekend though Union Station hosted the NFL Draft, a big event where all 32 professional teams in the top American Football league on the planet gather to pick who among the top prospects from the college teams across the U.S., they want to offer contracts to and invite to start their professional careers with those teams. That about sums it up. I’ve known about the Draft for most of my life and have so far spent the better part of the past thirty years not caring about it.
This year though is different, the Draft has landed squarely in the center of my city. Union Station has been a stage for many important moments in my life, from my first volunteer job at the Kansas City Irish Center back in 2006 to the place where I began several trips back to my original hometown of Chicago onboard Amtrak’s Southwest Chief to birthday lunches and dinners at Pierpont’s and Harvey’s and even a date. So, for me it feels personal to have that most public of spaces be taken over for the biggest, richest, pro sports league in the country for the whole weekend.
“It’s now begun to rain. Some church bells ringing. According to the Amtrak app the train is about 10 minutes out from Lee’s Summit, which is about 20 minutes down the line from here further to the southeast. Here I am, hiding underneath the overhang of the roof of this station that’s still deserted.”
As I waited a long Union Pacific freight train passed by the station on the further of the two tracks in front of the platforms. [train recording] It was carrying carriage upon carriage of double-stacked cargo containers that had come from one of the many ocean ports to the south and east of Kansas City, marked with the logos of a number of different cargo shipping companies including the Taiwanese Evergreen Group, whose container ship got stuck in the Suez Canal last year. At this point I was joined by a Salvadorean trainspotter who came down to the platform to take some videos of the train. We talked for a few minutes, or rather spluttered back and forth not speaking each other’s languages. I really need to properly learn Spanish one of these days.
“I happened to just meet a rather friendly Salvadorean gentleman who’s here for a conference. Charming. Oh, my Spanish is so terrible, and using French didn’t help. Train’s on time now, should be here in about eight minutes.”
Those eight minutes turned into 10 minutes as the River Runner arrived at 13:30 rather than 13:26, which by my book is alright when it comes to Amtrak delays.
[Sound of the Missouri River Runner arriving in Independence]
I let a handful of passengers disembark before telling the conductor my name, which he recognized from his passenger list, and boarded. The best thing about Amtrak’s service is even in coach on these state-run smaller services the seats really are quite comfortable. Plus, if you just want something to eat to keep you going, you’ll be able to find something in the café car. I was so thankful to buy a bag of really salty chips in there, my lunch for the day. There were probably about 30 other people on the train, most of them traveling into Kansas City from points east in Missouri, but some were on board going to the Draft.
[Missouri River Runner ambient noise]
This meant that once we arrived at Union Station 20 minutes later, the passengers who disembarked were a good mix of excited at seeing the station taken over by the NFL and frustrated that the station was closed off for its original use, to welcome rail travelers into Kansas City.
The Amtrak platform at Union Station was occupied by a force of about 10 Homeland Security officers, who stared at us emotionless as we disembarked. We were directed by the Amtrak conductors to walk down the platform towards its western end and then to use a gate in the fence separating the railyard from the parking lot beyond. In that parking lot were more Homeland Security officers, stern faced and resolute. They didn’t need to tell anyone not to cross them or try to enter the station, it was pretty clear that wouldn’t be received lightly. Despite the emails that Amtrak sent out every so often in the days before the trip about how the arrival procedure would go there was still some confusion among the passengers as to where we were being taken. I tried to help, having studied the plans as thoroughly as I could to make sure I did what I needed for this trip to happen without a hitch.
“Well, it’s going to 25th St, it’s south of here, it’s going down here, past Broadway, and to the left.”
Amtrak Police officers then guided us towards a set of shuttles, in fact trolley party buses, that would take us to the drop off point at 25th and Jefferson, one block west of the IRS building’s Broadway entrance.
At this point, I should say that this whole idea began a few months earlier. I thought about going to the Chiefs’ Super Bowl Rally in February by train, catching the River Runner either in Lee’s Summit or Independence, again just to see what would happen when it got to Union Station, but on that cold, windy February Wednesday I forgot all about it and took the Main Street Max bus downtown with my Dad. On our return trip we got stuck in Midtown for a good two hours waiting for a southbound Main Street bus to pass us. A part of the plan, and the risk, of this Friday’s adventure would be seeing whether the Ride KC city buses would be running on schedule & on route or even running at all.
This time, I’d done more of my homework, so I knew if the buses weren’t running on time or at all, which in my experience as a former bus commuter in Kansas City is sometimes possible, I could be home in around 2 hours on foot. Sure, it’s a 6 mile walk south from 25th Street to my home in Brookside, but I had my best gym shoes on and lots of water available if needed.
Thankfully, I only had to wait for about 10 minutes before a southbound Main Street Max bus arrived at the stop on Broadway at 25th Street. I didn’t get any audio of this, my goal was to get on board and not be left behind or somehow make what was turning out to be the best possible situation into one that I’d come to regret.
I boarded my bus at 14:15 and was at my local stop without any trouble or problems. All that remained was a delightful walk home through the tree-lined streets of Brookside listening to the birdsong and fountains in my neighbors’ front yards.
[Audio from my walk home from the bus]
So, as it turned out, things worked out. One big difference I noticed between today and the Super Bowl rally a few months ago was the crowd control on Pershing Road and around Union Station all together was much stronger. I guess I could put it down to the NFL paying for stricter security than the City of Kansas City did, plus I read a story earlier this week that KCPD still owes the 350 officers who worked and managed the crowds during the Super Bowl Parade & Rally their overtime pay 73 days later. Not having thousands of people, myself included, walking down the middle of Pershing Road and Broadway to try to get out of that crowd that some have numbered up to 1 million people at the Super Bowl Rally really helped keep traffic flowing, and keep the public transportation network moving.
I’m still frustrated, as were many of my fellow Amtrak passengers, that the Union Station organization sees itself less as a transportation hub, which the station was built for, and more as a big center for the city and a tourist attraction. I like all the things that Union Station has to offer, yet I think it would be better for our city if we increased our focus on the rail services that the station was built for and improved those services to be more frequent, and more useful for everyone in this metro. I’m glad that I chose to take a train into the station rather than try to get a train out of the station during the NFL Draft, for while I was able to disembark on the platform and board my city bus to go home all in the course of 20 minutes, the departing passengers were told to be at the platform 2 hours before their trains left, and were given trailers to wait in or else they’d have to sit outside in folding chairs with few amenities to speak of. It’s a solution, but it’s not great.
So, I’d consider Friday’s adventure to be a success. Truly, the only part of it that didn’t quite go to plan was my decision to leave home when I did, it took me far less time to be driven to Independence Station than I thought it would. Otherwise, I’m surprised to say it all worked. Would I do it again? Sure.
Wednesday Blog by Seán Thomas Kane 