City, state officials beseech federal board to eliminate rail lines | OKG News.com

---from Tom Elmore

God forbid one company has to pay more for shipping...

Tell it to the 70+ Oklahomans who make their living at BOARDMAN, Inc.

Explain to them that, while Chinese industrial fabricators are reportedly able to ship to the US West Coast cheaper than many US companies, "certain folks" here in Oklahoma City are much more interested in "four miles of redundant urban expressway" and whatever they imagine they, themselves, might get out of it.

Ask the downtown "party boys" who's gonna support their "party" when Oklahoma workers' "disposable income" disappears.

Blind self interest is not just ugly. It's inevitably also counterproductive.

TOM ELMORE

get a clue ... the crosstown is not close to "redundant" ... and the blight the C2C area currently sits in going away is well worth any minor costs

Tom - youre all alone here dude. No one supports you. We're tired of wasting time dealing with this crap. We want our road, we want it now, and we're done listening to the same tired arguement you always give. Give it a rest already!!! It's time to move on, let the road be built.

I have never seen such the whiniest post.

If you think you're so 'right', go fight it at the STB and prove to us why we need this stupid realignment. Nobody cares about your whining for a new road. All we care about is the truth and the needs of Oklahoma City. The Gazette just posted a story where even the Boardman company is getting screwed just so some brainless crybaby can get their 'precious' road.

Why is Oklahoma so bent on being backwards? All the other states are saving their Union Stations. They see the writing on the wall. Driving is down for 8 consecutive months.

Tom sure is taking a lot of heat trying to keep us competitive with the rest of the nation.

Tom I asked you this once before and you didn't answer but I will make another attempt.

Do you see no value in the Core to Shore project?

I've asked him at least three times and never gotten an answer. I think this is a "rails at any price" attitude. I don't see any evidence that he has any vision for Oklahoma City, or interest in Oklahoma City moving forward. I'd like to hear from people who can explain how we can do both, if they are so determined to save this set of rails. Union Station should be a non-issue, because we are going to preserve it regardless. I'm interested in hearing how many people like living near multi-modal train stations and parking garages, and if keeping it a station renders the area unfit for residential living, just what we can do with that land that will help Oklahoma City turn into a place more people want to live in and visit. Are these people fine with giving up our iconic Central Park, or, if not, where would they put it? How would they connect the CBD and the river with trains running between them?

Where else would they put I-40? We cannot pretend I-40 doesn't need to be redone. It's a major east-west interstate. But, leaving it elevated like it is will do absolutely nothing to erase the blight under and around it. Obviously that's fine with the redeck I-40 people, but not fine for most of us who want to see that land turned into something special. What would it cost to move I-40 somewhere else than where it's currently planned? Would moving it cost more than building a multi-modal station someplace other than Union Station? How much would we need to spend on Union Station to turn it into a multi-modal station? We'd have to build parking lots and/or garages anyway, which would be an expense that would be standard regardless of where the station was bult.

Before I could be in favor of keeping those rail lines and rerouting I-40, I'd certainly like the above questions answered.

Again, saving Union Station and turning it into a multimodal transit hub, would not give up our Central Park, we would still have a central park, obviously a part of it would be cut out where the station sits. We would still have a world class park, and a transit center right there to bring people to it.

Examples of immensely successful "transit-oriented development" or "TOD" as planners have come to call it, abound in the nation's "new transit cities." In each of these, the most valuable property is any property adjacent to the rail transit lines, and of this, the "plum" property surrounds the central terminals and stops.

In the expansion of the nation, government generally limited its role to providing, or partnering in providing access -- a point from which individuals and businesses did the "developing." The impressive success of the nation's new rail transit systems in driving development and redevelopment would seem to plainly indicate that the formula still works.

The atmosphere at the "Core to Shore meetings" I attended was inescapably similar to that of ODOT's "Crosstown meetings." The citizenry wasn't being "made a partner." Citizens, instead, were being notified of what had already been decided from "on-high." A neutral observer might have concluded it had all the marks of a "big land grab" -- but, then "government says it's OK, so it must be OK...." -- after all, it just happens "they're putting this big highway in down there," you know.

Arbitrarily wiping away a long standing, minority area such as Riverside is plainly considered problematic enough by the Feds, from not only moral and legal, but also practical standpoints, that it is pointedly forbidden by federal highway standards applicable at the time of the planning of the "New Crosstown."

I once asked Pat Fennell if she didn't figure there'd likely be "just about as many brown people left in Riverside as there are black people left in the new Deep Deuce" once the "reinventors" were through.

I don't recall her answer.

I do know this: The Almighty promises us that people who misuse the poor will deal with Him. What weight do you figure He normally assigns to the standard "urban blight" argument?

That might be something for the "planners" to consider...

TOM ELMORE

You would have a block or two north of Union Station for a park, but land would have to be used for parking, for bus lanes, etc, which would occupy at least one block north of Union Station, by my estimation. Then, you would have no way to get to the park south of Union Station that would be pedestrian friendly. Also, all the train lines etc south of Union Station would be an eyesore, having seen many of the multimodal stations that exist. Wouldn't I-40 then take up much of the space between it and the river? You'd end up with two pocket parks with an interstate and a train station between them, and no gracious central park that people would want to spend any time in. And, as I've said, can you get people in Oklahoma to move downtown if they were living immediately adjacent to a noisy train station, with bus and trolley traffic, and an interstate highway as well? What other kind of development would we get in the place of residential housing? And, how would that promote downtown density?

I'm going to add this as well. I've visited and admired a lot of cities, and lived in a few. What makes a city a great place to live? People like to live in an aesthetically pleasing place, where there are things to do. That's why people put up with the traffic in places like Seattle....it's beautiful there, and they've got an ocean. Lots of other cities have oceans near them. Denver has the mountains.

Oklahoma City is sitting on the great plains. We don't have a lot of trees. We don't have any natural features nearby like huge lakes, the ocean or mountains. Making Oklahoma City an aesthetically pleasing place is really important, if we want this city to grow and become more city-like. The reason I am so behind Core to Shore is because it is a vision that is designed to make Oklahoma City a more interesting and aesthetically pleasing place in which to live and spend time. It's a grand vision that has a chance of succeeding.

I think it's short sighted to drop those plans to preserve a rail line that is probably not even the most needed line for this city. People will not move here because they can take the train from El Reno to Tinker or downtown. People will not move downtown because we've turned Union Station back into a station, and they can now take the train to the Outlet Mall in El Reno or Tinker. But, if we have a mile long park downtown, something akin to the iconic Boston Public Garden, a mini Central Park, a park that links the CBD and the river, people will be fighting to live next to it. It's a way to help turn us into a city people admire, and in which they want to live. I can't seem to get off this soapbox, but it's because I think this is a really important issue. Rail transportation is not what is going to make this into a tier two city. Being a place people want to live and visit might.

There's a reason for the power and longevity of the old saying, "A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush." It's an expression of the wisdom of the ages.

The OKC proponents of "Urban Renewal" apparently didn't consider that before embarking on their own disaster.

"Happiness is not getting what you want -- but wanting what you have," goes another saying. Then there's the one about "the grass always being greener on the other side of the fence."

Uh huh.

Wise people assess and appreciate what they have. Wise people do not precipitously destroy the gifts of their forbears.

Consider the long string of disasters brought by such thoughtless destruction.

Consider, too, what Documentary Historian Robert Jackson, a man well acquainted with the "highway culture," told OKLAHOMAN columnist Ann DeFrange about the "New Crosstown plan." --- "Highway builders don't care what they destroy," he said -- as reported by Ann in the column. This hit ODOT so hard that they reportedly threatened Jackson's pay until he "reinterviewed" with DeFrange and changed his statement.

You see -- "a little light nearly got under the door," and ODOT just couldn't have that.

What we "have" in Oklahoma City -- is the stated envy of of transit developers all over the nation (or we could trade that for "four more miles of unaffordable, generic expressway"). If we are wise, we'll carefully consider that -- in the context of what has all-too-often been the unfortunate outcome of "the Oklahoma way..."

We can do better, folks -- and if we do better, the entire state will benefit.

TOM ELMORE

Does Dallas have a "Central Park"?

Would you want to live in Dallas? I don't. Cities like Chicago, New York and Boston are known for their parks. Atlanta has a great park, and while Denver doesn't have a true Central Park, there are multiple great parks there. I think it is an important element for a city like OKC, which has a dearth of parks. Will Rogers could be a really nice park, but its' location causes problems. The park around Lake Hefner is OK, but it's not great.

The same old argument comes up that the location must be the location for an as yet, non-existent rail system. However, it's NOT in the location anyone would want it in.

Let it now be mistaken though, I don't think anyone would want the building demolished, we can save the station without question, but we're talking rail LINES. Lines, we're really wasting all this time/effort/money on a bunch of crap rail lines that don't get used, that we won't BE using. I for one see the yard as a hinderence to future growth in every possible way. It would serve as a barrier as the old I-40 did. Instead of helping to spur development, it's going to stop it and we'll see a "other side of the tracks".

So seriously, the 100K+ people that drive the road want it done. And Richard, I could care less if you dont' agree. The majority of people want the new I-40 and are tired of this crap about the rails. We drive, we use the road, we want a new one and we're tired of dealing with a small group that has it's own agenda. We've wanted it for 10 years, and now that it's happening, there is no way we're going to sit idly by and let someone screw it up.

Crosstown 2012 is only destroying your railyard space. UNION STATION WILL STILL BE THERE. This rail line is not an important corridor. It doesn't even have anything to do with the one that would go to the airport--as that is the BNSF line! We need this highway even if the general public is still traveling less, businesses will still be transporting goods at a greater rate no matter the price of fuel & they're the ones that are making our deteriorating highways worse.

Also, we're so supportive of keeping Union Station for the sole purpose of light rail service to these suburbs of Oklahoma City. Have these cities themselves expressed the interest of building light rail in to their towns? Being that, just like in the Dallas metroplex, each of those cities would have to put up the money for the plan.

Albeit, I do know that Edmond and Guthrie have expressed interest in extending the Heartland Flyer through Kansas in to Kansas City, but that is a multi-state, nationwide system.

This is our own little Oklahoma City metropolitan project. I haven't heard one story that states cities like Yukon & El Reno fronting 30%-50% of the funds to build the lines and the stations that would need to be present on the line (the only line associated with Union Station) that comes to them.

If you build a much larger and accessible transportation facility, where I've seen it being suggested and I support as a future location, and this line goes in to it, we'll still be alright. Union Station can still be a nice little Central Park stop on the line. We'll still be spending money either way whether they tear (will tear) out the tracks at Union. Face the facts, they're not halting construction on either end of Crosstown 2012! Probably means the guts in the middle will be torn out soon. Thank God!!

NY Times: DOWNTOWNS ACROSS THE US SEE STREETCARS IN THEIR FUTURES

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/14/us...us&oref=slogin

Are you seriously suggesting the because Dallas doesn't have it, we shouldn't build it??

I'm not concerned about the TOD issue. Having a station there would spur development for residential as well as other issues. But it's more important, IMO that the park be large, iconic, and not cut in half by a large multi-modal station.

As far as Boardman goes, I don't see why they can just transport their product half a mile to the closest place to load up a freight car. They seem to be overlooking that simple solution.

SOMETHING ABOUT RUNNING HEAD-ON INTO TODAY'S REALITIES MAKES "CERTAIN COUNCIL MEMBERS'" MEMORY GO "STRANGELY HAZY" ....

Amazing OKC Council conversation about transit with Rick Cain, COTPA director.

New councilors tell it like it is -- while longer serving councilors seem to "forget" aggressive city government complicity with ODOT's plan to destroy OKC Union Station -- and the way they brushed aside citizen insistence that Union Station be preserved and energetically developed as our multimodal transit center.

Plainly -- the citizenry has vision OKC "leadership" does not have. However, in this case, the vision of those citizens was aggressively "hushed up" by former city government officials and some that still remain -- and their many willing accomplices.

City of Oklahoma City | City Council Archive

TOM ELMORE
NATI - Solutions to the Nation's Transportation Problems

I detect a wee bit of sensationalism here. I have yet to see anyone talking about destroying Union Station. We all want it preserved, just not necessarily as a station for trains.

This is how the 1999 OKC 20 Year Plan Update Transportation Working Group resolution on Union Station was presented:

RESOLUTION REGARDING OKC UNION STATION: UNANIMOUSLY APPROVED BY OKC PLAN UPDATE TRANSPORTATION WORKING GROUP, AUGUST 31, 1999

Preservation of existing rail assets; creating a modern multimodal transportation center at OKC Union Station

OKC Union Station, at 300 SW 7th, stands at the nexus of existing rail lines linking downtown to other important areas and transportation terminals (both urban and suburban). The station and its grade-separated railway yard and corridors are assets of great potential value in developing high-quality, low-cost multimodal transport for Oklahoma City. Union Station is owned by COTPA and several of the rail corridors serving it are now owned either by the city or the state of Oklahoma. In light of mobility and air-quality concerns presently being accelerated by aggressive inner-city development, Oklahoma City should proceed with plans to develop Union Station as a modern, multimodal transportation center for intercity passenger trains and buses as well as regional rail and bus transit. All existing rail access corridors serving Union Station must be preserved, along with the existing yard facilities. Current ODOT plans to build a new I-40 Crosstown on the existing northern rail approaches and through the Union Station yard must be rejected.

___________________________________________


SUCCESS OF HIGH-QUALITY TRANSIT

The successes of Dallas DART Rail as outlined in the Sunday, October 3, 1999 DALLAS MORNING NEWS are impossible to ignore. In spite of the predictable cacophony of naysayers and critics, Dallas leaders seized a fleeting opportunity to build the rail transit system at relatively low cost before existing rail corridors and facilities enabling its low-cost construction were lost forever. (The Metroplex has spent roughly $1.1 billion on the DART Rail System to date. Most of this money was raised from 1 cent sales taxes in Dallas and participating suburbs. ODOT will spend in excess of one-quarter billion dollars rebuilding the 3.96 mile I-40 Crosstown.)

For its vision and persistence, Dallas is experiencing a sea-change in its mobility and quality of life. Today, DART Rail along with the infant Trinity Railway Express system which will soon link Ft. Worth and the mid-cities to DART, is moving 40,000 riders a day. Along DART Rail Corridors, "rampant growth" is taking place. Over $600 million in new development has sprung up around the DART Rail lines since they opened in June, 1996. Ridership of DART buses, which fell in the mid-1990s, has grown 5% since 1998, growth attributed to the fact they now link to the trains.

According to a University of North Texas study, values of property served by DART Rail are now 25% higher than for similar properties not on the rail system. Clearly, high-quality transit, defined by modern rail systems like DART Rail, is a dynamic tool for planned development and redevelopment. DART contends the starter rail system, funded primarily by a one-cent sales tax in Dallas and twelve participating suburbs, was built for roughly one-fifth the cost of producing the same amount of new carrying capacity with the new highways. As a significant ancillary benefit, since much of the system is being developed on existing corridors, the social trauma associated with tearing out old neighborhoods to create new highways has been avoided.

DART and similar new systems in middle America are trashing the transit-negative presuppositions and shibboleths long used by "highways-only" "transportation departments" as justification for their one-dimensional philosophies. Oklahoma -- most especially Oklahoma City -- ignores the phenomenal successes of these new systems at its very great peril. This will not keep Oklahoma's ingrained "highways-only" transportation establishment from trying to ignore it anyway.

PRESERVING IRREPLACEABLE INFRASTRUCTURE BY REUSING IT

Oklahoma City is undeniably at a crossroads. The contest between conservative management and reuse of existing transportation infrastructure versus its destruction to support far less attractive outcomes at far greater expense is arguably nowhere better illustrated than in the "I-40 Crosstown D-Option Plan."

Whatever the other negative byproducts of the "D-Option" plan (and there are MANY), the wanton destruction of the rail facility serving Union Station and its potential for saving us from many transportation-related woes which are only beginning to emerge, could well be among the worst.

If Oklahoma City is ever to have a relatively inexpensive yet highly effective rail transit system like DART Rail, Union Station and the rail facilities serving it must be saved. The chance to save this magnificent infrastructure will never come again -- nor will we be able to replace it with "something just as good." New transportation corridors can NEVER be superimposed on existing neighborhoods as effectively as those neighborhoods grow up around pre-existing corridors.

Union Station and its grade-separated rail facilities were built in 1930 as a planned, integral unit (unlike the I-40 Crosstown, for which there evidently was no rational replacement strategy). Every element of the station and its rail lines were designed for optimum utility -- and continue to function today. Although built to serve intercity trains, Union Station is at the nexus of existing rail lines which also serve the Stockyards area, Will Rogers Airport, Wheatland and Mustang to the southwest, the State Fairgrounds, I-40 / Meridian District, Yukon and El Reno to the west, Bricktown and the Zoo / Omniplex / Remington Park area to the northeast, Midwest City and Tinker AFB to the east, as well as Harrah, Shawnee and Seminole, Luther, Chandler, Stroud and Tulsa. These lines also interchange with the Burlington Northern Santa Fe north-south mainline now served by Amtrak's HEARTLAND FLYER.

The "D-Option" will destroy the critical rail links to Will Rogers Airport and Tulsa. It will destroy the marvelous Robinson and Walker street underpasses, sending current BNSF trains across the same streets further south on at-grade crossings at the foot of Capitol Hill. It will decimate the Union Station rail yard, leaving only the northerly Union Pacific line somewhat intact.

Instead of allowing its Union Station facility to be destroyed, Dallas redeveloped it as a vital multimodal transportation center serving Amtrak passenger trains, DART Rail and Buses, and Trinity Railway Express trains. As good as the Dallas facility is, it simply cannot be compared with the immediate access afforded to critical areas by OKC Union Station's rail lines.

In light of Oklahoma City's growing air-quality and mobility problems, the planned destruction of the usefulness of Oklahoma City Union Station could only be described as "utterly irresponsible." To destroy it for the benefit of "two new lanes of traffic both directions" on I-40 is simply unbelievable.

Oklahoma's transportation establishment has so far produced well over $11 billion in unfunded highway maintenance need -- a number which is growing every day. Whatever their "plan," it has succeeded mainly in putting several future generations of our unborn offspring under a prodigious load of debt. Adding another $250 million (for exactly 3.96 miles of new highway!) to the negative side of the ledger instead of managing the existing structure and developing cheaper alternatives is simply unacceptable. It cannot be justified.

Oklahoma City can and should aggressively develop efficient, environmentally clean transit from Union Station, using DART as a model. To do otherwise is to reject a tested model of success in favor of an undeniable model of abject failure and irredeemable debt.

TOM ELMORE
North American Transportation Institute

Broken record alert - nothing new to see here. Just some 10 year old draft document that was pre-C2C.

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Oklahoma City - The surprise your family has been looking for.