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Driving is on the right side of the road.

All Kansas City Airport rental cars are automatic transmission.

Your local drivers' licence is required.

An International Drivers' Permit (or IDP) may be required, especially if your local drivers' licence is in a language other than the local language (you may inquire when you pick up your car).

Kansas City Driving Stress Level: 4/10

The Kansas City Metropolitan Area has more freeway lane-miles per capita than any other large metropolitan area in the USA, so know which highway you want, study up before you set out.

 

The downtown freeway loop, is a complex layout of freeways in downtown Kansas City, Missouri involving 23 exits, four Interstate Highways, four U.S. highways and numerous city streets. Each exit in the freeway loop is numbered 2 and suffixed with every letter of the alphabet except I, O and Z (which would look like 1, 0 and 2 on the exit signs), although some of the exits are currently under construction/renovation and closed to traffic. The entire circumference of the loop is just over four miles (6 km).

 

Kansas Citians tend to express U.S. and Missouri highway designations with the number before the word "highway," (e.g., 40 highway, 71 highway). This colloquialism tends not to apply to interstates or Kansas route numbers (e.g., "I-70", "K-10").

 

Finding street numbers in the Kansas City Metropolitan Area isn't as hard as you might imagine, though a GPS-equipped Kansas City Airport rental car is a good idea. The Missouri side of the Metropolitan Area shares a grid system with Johnson County on the Kansas Side. Most east-west streets are numbered and most north-south streets named. Addresses on east-west streets are numbered from Main Street in Kansas City, Missouri, and on north-south streets from St. John Avenue (or the Missouri River, in the River Market area). The direction 'South' in street and address numbers is generally implied if 'North' is not specified, except for numbered 'avenues' in North Kansas City. In the northland, east-west streets use the prefix N.E. or N.W., depending on which side of N. Main they run on. In most of Wyandotte County, Kansas the north-south streets are numbered and the address numbers are measured from Riverview Avenue.

 

A few suburbs use completely independent numbering schemes; however, the majority use the Kansas City, MO system, even in Kansas.

Car Rental Protection
Learn how to protect yourself when renting a car at Kansas City Airport.