The thing that cracks me up about all of this push for mass transit is that more than anything else, mass transit is a pain. If you have small children (strollers) or have to transport any kind of grocery, bulky purchase, etc. it's next to impossible to do so on any mass transit vehicle.

Seriously, who is going to use this? You might get people to travel around on the weekends but where are they going to go once they reach their destination? Norman to Bricktown is fun and all but after a couple of weekends the novelty wears off.

I was talking with a guy who lived in Europe for a couple of decades and took mass transit everywhere he went. He was laughing at the idea of mass transit working in OKC. He pointed out (rightly so) that the cost to travel a couple of miles in Stuttgart Germany where he lived was about $4.00 one way. The cost to keep it up and running was immense and was only feasible in compact cities planned around things to do with in walking distance.

American cities have been designed around the car. Why not push for greater fuel efficiency in cars if the environment really matters? Mass transit is an EXTREMELY costly solution to what will likely be, at best, a convenient novelty.

What I have always found is that the people that love mass transit are the people who ride it casually they are never people who depend on it a soul source of transportation.

I have to depend on it back in the 90's in my military days. It sucked.

You enjoy a lovely ride with the all the low lifes of society that hate thier life or want to tell you their sob story in hopes you will lend them a few bucks. Then you have the parents who let their kids turn the train car/bus into a playground. You cannot forget that one person that wants to hold the bus up 20 minutes while they make a descision. Lastly and my personal favorite are the incompent staff mass transit employees.

I would pay $20 a gallon for gas before I would even think of riding a bus.

The only cities that have good mass transit are cities like NYC where the grocery store, restaurant, movie theater etc. a short walking distance from home.

If your a single guy like most are in OKC, you can forget about getting a date when your transportation is mass transit. Even the tree hugger chicks want a guy with car.

No one is forcing anyone to use mass transit.

Thank you for your response, but I would invite you to re-peruse the Core to Shore plans. The park as planned would stretch from a block south of Reno all the way to the River, which is at about SW 15th street. Union Station is at SW 5th street, so there are four blocks north of Union Station which were to be designated park, and ten blocks south of it. So, no, the structure would very neatly bisect the park.

I believe you misunderstand our problems with this plan. No one wants Union Station to go away. In an ideal world, there wouldn't be a six lane freeway bisecting the park. I would prefer that it be south of the river, but can accept it as planned. As planned, the highway would be six feet below grade, as would one rail line. There is a beautiful pedestrian bridge already designed to allow traffic to cross said highway. It's the combination of a station being used for commercial freight, multiple lanes of track AND a six lane highway that would destroy the park for pedestrian use.....a highway is bad enough, but combining it with a commercial rail station and lines would be a aesthetic disaster.

Today I drove down I-35 to Norman. What I saw south of the river were multiple rail lines running east and west. There are plenty of lines there to accomodate freight. There are probably lines there that could accomodate passenger rail, should we ever get to the point that they are used. I haven't heard talk of running passenger rail to Denver or Little Rock. Are we going to sit on lines for 20 years, ruining our potential for improving our city, because some day someone might want to take a train to Denver and they HAVE to be able to leave from Union Station? They can't pick that train up somwhere else? The BNSF doesn't even want the line south of Union Station. So, we're going to sit on it in case some rail line does want it? To me, this is valuing rail for rail's sake, not for what it can do for us and how it can be used. I am firmly in favor of remaking our city to become a place I'm proud of, a place I want to live and show off to visitors. You live in Dallas. Dallas needs to look at Chicago, New York and Boston,cities that value their public spaces, and learn something.

jbrown84:

True...in most of the developer renderings, a swath of open land extends south of the freeway to the river; however, the central park itself most certainly lies north of Interstate 40, covering an 8 city block area beginning right across the street from Union Station.

The central park land being purchased in advance by the city (in order to protect it from inappropriate development) falls entirely within this location. That space, along with two additional tracts immediately adjacent to either side of the depot building, are the only parcels your city wishes to acquire - at least according to official maps displayed during the Oklahoma City city council meeting this past Tuesday morning.

Before taking artist's conceptions to heart, I'd ask my elected officials if there is anything being done to legally restrain construction along tracts south of the freeway!

You insist that passenger railway infrastructure is "ugly" and that its very presence would "ruin" any park-like setting. I vehemently disagree - and challenge you to visit Dallas' Union Terminal, or any other modern facility of your choice, then report back to the forum.

If the Oklahoma Department of Transportation is successful in carrying out its plan, the Union Station right-of-way IS "going away" - at least insofar as railroad applications are concerned. Let's not fool ourselves!

A comparably-sized footprint in some other location wouldn't come with the same access to existing railroad lines.


veritas:

To you, mass transit is a pain. To me, living in an auto-centric society is a pain. Still, I've never asked anyone to give up his precious automobile! All I'm asking for are a few viable alternatives - the very things we used to have!

I'll challenge you, too: come to Big D and see all the mothers and children - with strollers, yet - using the [gasp, shock] TRAIN to travel from their suburban homes to the zoo, or to the mall, or to the museums downtown. DART's Red Line, southbound from Plano and Richardson, any fair-weather weekday, mid-morning. Be there or be square! <grin>

The ability to successfully reach one's final destination through the use of mass transit is precisely where the importance of a comprehensive system with convenient connections comes in.

The creation of compact cityscapes blessed with pedestrian-friendly layouts is one of the primary goals behind the Transit Oriented Development movement.

Yes, most southern and western U.S. cities "have been designed around the car" - since World War II. It wasn't the case before...and shouldn't be the case in the future! Why stubbornly continue down the same path?! Sure, more fuel-efficient vehicles would be a good thing, since the environment really DOES matter (is there some question in your mind?); but, we can't stop there. Even if cars were designed to use non-potable water as fuel and emit nothing but pure oxygen, we'd STILL be stuck with the myriad congestion, land use, safety and quality of life issues inherent in our blind over-dependence upon motor vehicles for passenger transport.

You believe mass transit is "EXTREMELY costly"; but, what is the ultimate cost of our feeble attempts to maintain status quo?!

Preparing for tomorrow is the main goal behind the preservation of Union Station.


Garl B. Latham
Dallas, Texas

Holy crap, throw a few more stereotypes in there. Don't ride it then. I think the point whole point of planning mass transit NOW is to be ahead of the curve. Then in 10 years when the OKC freeways are parking lots we'll already have an alternative. I've used many different mass transit systems. I love them compared to driving around those huge cities.

If it's done right it will be great. If it's done half-assed it will be setup for failure.

I'm usually content to just lurk, but this is just getting silly.

Mass transit is as good or as bad as it's implementation, like any other big project. Are there ugly, under used, poorly designed wastes of money? Anyone who has seen the People Mover in Detroit or the LA subway knows that there are. Are there efficient, pleasant, and well designed systems? Absolutely, and many are in cities not much bigger than OKC.

The real question is: What do we want OKC to look like in 15 years?

Do we want more people living and working downtown and in the surrounding areas?
Do we want to make the city center more accessible from all points in the city?
Do we want to spur development in parts of the city that are near the core, but not within walking distance?
Do we want visitors to see all of our city, or just the area around their hotel?

I believe that these are all worthwhile goals and that a well designed mass transit initiative can accomplish this. The great insight of MAPS was that without a healthy core, the whole city suffers. I feel that an important part of keeping that core healthy and continuing the progress we've made is to give visitors and commuters the choice to leave their cars at home when they go downtown, to give business owners the choice to build up instead of out, and to give residents the choice to not drive at all if they don't want to or can't afford to.

Some people are just nuts for trains, and that's fine. I think the union station rail yard could and probably will go to the great depot in the sky without forever dooming all hope of real mass transit. I also believe that I 40 needs to get built and it needs to get built sooner rather than later, seeing as how chunks of it keep falling off.

That said, we will have mass transit in this city, probably in the next 16 years and probably at great public cost. It could be rail, it could be bus lanes, it could be something we haven't even thought of yet. There is simply no avoiding it. The way cities were built in the 1970s and 1980s doesn't work. We know that from experience and observation, and we had the wisdom to start building one of the first truly 21st century cities almost 20 years ago.

We can't afford to stop now.

Here is where you give yourself away. What is a "swath of land" but a park? It is a swath of green space, a place where people recreate. Does every square inch of park have to have a pavilion or created feature on it to be a park? I give you Central Park in NYC, which is mostly open land. What you also fail to realize is that it is the entire swath of green that connects the CBD to the river. The river is a great addition to our city. By connecting the CBD to the river, we say that our downtown is a place where people live, work and play. Dallas is an example of a city that does not invite people to relax and recreate downtown, unless it means going to a restaurant or club. There's where Dallas has made its' great mistake. It's ugly, and it's only notable feature is its' buildings. When people say "Dallas is a big Oklahoma City, it's not a complement to either." I would never want to live in Dallas if I could live in places with great parks like Chicago, New York or Boston.

Tell me how many people find Dallas a walkable city? Isn't walking as important, if not more important, than mass transit? I would say so. Mass transit keeps people inactive. It may save energy, but in the long run, it's no better for the downtown as a living, breathing entity. What's great about the great cities is that they have places in which it is not only easy to walk, but also places where it's enjoyable to walk.

And why is it so important that Union Station be a train station? Bricktown is full of buildings that used to be warehouses. The Montgtomery, a great apartment building, used to be a department store. Our old public library is going to be condos. I haven't seen anyone screaming that they be used for what they were intended. Some of the most charming cities use all kinds of buildings for things other than they were intended. I don't understand this feeling that using Union Station for something other than a station would "destroy" it. Bricktown doesn't look destroyed, nor does the Montgomery.

Union Station is in a terrible location for a mutimodal station. It's located away from our CBD and Bricktown, the two hearts of our downtown. The people who oppose using Union Station as a multimodal station aren't necessarily anti-mass transit at all. In fact, if you'd really bothered to read all of our posts, you'd find that most of us want a multi-modal station where we have the best chance of people using it. Convenience is one of the best ways of getting people to use public transit. Union Station is not convenient to our hotels, our restaurants or our businesses.



And, thank you for talking down to us and showing us that you are more closely aligned with Tom Elmore than a dispassionate bystander who only wants what is best for Oklahoma City. You have failed to realize that most of us aren't "feebly" trying to maintain the status quo. Our vision for Oklahoma City is different from yours, but it doesn't mean we don't have a vision. It doesn't mean that vision doesn't include mass transit. In fact, since we actually DO live in Oklahoma City, perhaps our vision is one that has better chance of success.....to be something that is used, rather than using taxpayer money and running half-empty. Rail is not noble in and of itself. It has to contain people, or it becomes a joke. Ask anyone in Atlanta what MARTA stands for. And then ask them if they ever ride it.

Excellent words, betts!

If you look at other major cities, their main train stations are generally further from the middle of their CBD's than Union Station, which is about .6 miles south of the core of downtown.

Denver, Seattle, Kansas City, even Chicago and Milwaukee (in addition to the previously mentioned cities in California)... All their Amtrak / commuter rail stations are further from the middle of their CBD's. They merely link them with buses or light rail.

Development tends to spread from the CBD's towards the stations and that's exactly what we're hoping to happen with Core to Shore.

I went by the station as well, its a beautiful building.
I'm not sure if we can save the land area but we must find a way to keep it.

The building is not in jeopardy.

It's not only a matter of not riding it. It's also a matter of paying for it. Take the time, effort, and resources that would be spent subsidizing mass transit and plow that back in to your highway system.

There's a reason that malls aren't being built in the United States anymore. Like it or not, the big box store is here to stay and it's all because of one reason; easy access. Americans love to pull up, load up, and get on down the road. You're kidding yourself if you think this is going to change in the next 50 years.

Rather than spend money towards expensive non-solutions, I say invest in highway infrastructure. It's not a popular thing but popularity and reality don't always mix.

veritas, to be fair, we're discussing having the OPTION of adding rail service back to this location rather than destroying that forever.

And the whole point is that it would be way more cost effective to use the existing infrastructure than to have to try and recreate it later.

I agree with many of your points about the reality of rail service in OKC in the near term, but things have a way of changing and the best you can do is leave all your options open.

veritas said: "Rather than spend money towards expensive non-solutions, I say invest in highway infrastructure."


Well, I have to admit - it's nice to know precisely where people stand on the issues!

If only betts would be as candid!


GBL

betts,

Your post may be filled with "excellent words"; but, you gave yourself away (as it were) with your comment about the meaning of MARTA.

Dallas is closer to Oklahma City than Atlanta, Georgia. Just come on down here and ask a few of the frightened ones what the acronymn DART really means!

Look, y'all don't really want to discuss transportation logic - and that's okay. Life's too short to force the issue.

I'll leave you with one bit of sound advice, however: be careful when you place your trust in the artist renderings of developers. Be _especially_ leery when those plans aren't supported by ordinance or legislation. Today's undeveloped "park" land has an interesting way of becoming tomorrow's building site!


Garl


P.S. You may also be interested in Dallas' Trinity River Parkway proposal: a central park, downtown...with a controlled-access roadway running right through the middle of it.

GBL

I thought we were discussing transportation logic. If you consider logic agreement with your point of view only, then so be it.

I'm all about logical plans for transportation, and the use of Union Station is illogical to me. If you've got use studies for Oklahoma City that support your proposal, then I'd love to see them.

Oklahoma City is NOT Dallas, and I don't want it to become Dallas, one of my least admired cities in the US.

It was my understanding that the city council was going to zone land to support the Core to Shore plans. Were it to be zoned otherwise, I would oppose it as vehemently as I oppose illogical mass transit plans.

If Dallas finally has plans for a Central Park, hurrah. I'm in favor of parks. I'm not in favor of proposals that are attempting to jettison plans for open green space in our downtown.

Come on Pete - destroyed forever? Two lines will still serve the station. Here is the thing though. The pro-Union Station crowd are try to force a 21st century rail systems into exsting infrastructure that was put in place 70 years ago. Myself and many others on here would prefer to build a 21st century rail system based on the needs of the 21st century.

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

Quality transit in the 21st Century requires precisely what was required in the 20th Century. Any design for an optimum multimodal center would look a lot like OKC Union Station. Union Station, however, is available without "taking property."

Dallas, Denver, Salt Lake and other leaders and transit officials have all spoken quite clearly about the value of OKC Union Station. They know what they're talking about.

TOM ELMORE

Great post. Mass transit is coming, whether those that don't agree with it like it or not. It will be a good alternative to what we have now, both trains and buses. Not everyone will use it, but lots of people will IF we plan it right. That is why it is so important to start planning for it NOW.

Every city is different. They're saying what you want to hear, so you assume they know what they're talking about. Ever heard "location, location, location"? Union Station = lousy location, especially for commercial freight, which we know you want there. It will ruin our Core to Shore, which, in the rebirth of Oklahoma City, is far more important than one poorly located, old train station. There is plenty of track for commercial traffic south of the Oklahoma River, and Oklahoma City will never be a hub for east-west interstate passenger train travel. We're not in the right location, so it's a waste of time to consider. And trust me, if we become some massive hub for east-west train travel in 20 years, Union Station will be woefully inadequate for what we would need. I've lived here over 20 years, and we've been talking about starting up train travel to Kansas City the entire time. It still hasn't happened. The Sante Fe Station is fine for north-south travel, which is all that we need at this point in time.

Is this about the station or the tracks, anyway? The station isn't going anywhere, regardless of what we do. Let's leave Union Station out of the conversation, because all we're talking about removing is the tracks.

Union Station is actually in a perfect location for commuter rail transit, betts. Have you even looked at commuter rail systems in other cities? The Union Station railyard is closer to the CBD in OKC than is so with systems in other cities....Denver, for example. Every commuter rail system I can think of has their multi-modal rail yard located outside of the CBD. That's just something that takes up a lot of space, and you don't really want located right in the heart of a CBD. What you do, is connect the rail yard to the CBD with a light rail feeder line. That's how almost every other city that has a decent commuter rail service does it. The positives about the Union Station railyard is that the infrastructure is already there, and it's already tied in with existing rail lines. Laying down new rail line is expensive. Building new infrastructure for a rail yard would be expensive. All of that's already there at Union Station. All we'd have to do is lay down a few tracks to redevelop the rail yard. The tunnels are already dug and the right of way is there, and the connections are there with an east to west route on site (Shawnee to El Reno), and it connects in with the BNSF north south line.

I've lived in Denver. But, Union Station in Denver is not it immediately adjacent to an iconic park they've constructed. The CBD east (may have my directions mixed up) of it was also completely developed, giving them no choice but to use Union Station. No one is arguing with a east-west location for the line (although I don't think there's enough density that it will be used enough to justify the expenditure in anywhere near the immediate future). The "we're just going to add a few lines" means we're going to destroy the area for attractive future development. It also means we're going to throw in the bus lanes, and if the rail nuts have their way, we'll get all the commercial rail and trucking in there too. The light feeder line......where is it going? Right through the park? Right through the planned residential areas next to the park? If we need a feeder line, it means the line isn't in the right place to begin with. Again, no one going north-south is going to want to get off their north-south train, transfer to an east-west train, then transfer to a feeder route to get to the CBD. If the majority of our users have to make two transfers to get where they want to go, then the line isn't in the right place, and we have dramatically altered the practicality of the transit. Inconvenience means loss of ridership. A lot of other cities have had to use what they already have, because they didn't have closer open areas that could be used. We're pulling down a interstate highway, and the city owns that right of way. IMO, that's the perfect place to put light rail, if we think we need it. Other cities haven't had convenienct land like that for their use. Then, we've got land south and east of the Ford Center that would be a great location for a multi-modal station, and we could put it where it met the north-south line, elminating two transfers for north-south travelers and one for east-west travelers. Ridership will increase as convenience increases.

What we have to do is decide how we want that area to develop. If we want it to be a transit and trucking location, it's not going to be our great iconic green space, and it's not going to be a place people want to live. My opinion is that spaces with the potential for redevelopment like that don't come along very often in cities.

Alternatively, we've already got a rail yard south of the river. If we're "just going to add a few lines", let's do it there, especially since it can handle the commercial trucking with ease. If we're going to run a feeder line to the CBD anyway, we can run it from there east of the new Core to Shore area, and it will actually distribute people between Bricktown and the CBD. But, I think we need to worry about a north-south line first anyway, and see what kind of traffic we get there before spending billions to build a line we may not have the density to need.

Again, who's done the studies? Where are the data that shows that we've got enough population east and west who come into OKC on a regular basis to support this? I don't want rail so that we can be cool like other cities. I want mass transit that works for people, that gives them what they want, so that they're willing to use it.

I think there is a very reasonable chance you are right. We could spend billions of dollars and end with with a train people take to the OU games in Norman......six weekends a year. We might get lucky with 41 nights a year for basketball fans if we charge enough for parking near the Ford Center. You can't get to Quail Springs or Penn Square Mall on a train, even with lines as planned. You can't get to most of the restaurants in OKC either.

Even in places like Chicago, most people who aren't commuting to work from a place directly on the El to a place directly on it take the bus, because the El doesn't go where they want to go. I think we need to push for development of a massive bus route, comfortable natural gas-run buses with Wi-Fi, great bus stops and short waiting times for buses. That gives us the flexibility that we need, as well as allowing us to determine who uses mass transit, where they go and when. It would give us a better way to determine what kind of ridership we might expect when we were ready to spend our billions on mass transit.

I agree with everything that Betts says on this subject and she says it much better than I could.

Why did Union Station become obsolete? Why did the train service that utilized it go out of business? What has changed that now makes it viable?

Please don't tell me that gas prices will soon be so high that people will HAVE to use mass transit because that's an empty threat. High gas prices will just drive the market for more fuel efficient vehicles and alternative fuels.

I'm for light rail in the downtown area to facilitate building density in our urban core to serve those who want to live an urban existance but trains to Shawnee, Wheatland, Mustang etc. makes no sense to me and sounds like a huge waste of money.

I made my first trip to NY recently and relied strictly on public transportation while I was there. The traffic and parking there make mass transit make sense. It couldn't be more different here and although I enjoyed visiting NY, I would never trade my lifestyle here for one in Manhattan.

Don't bother building a train route to far south OKC because I can promise you that we won't use it and there really isn't much reason to run buses out this far because we don't use those either. I see empty buses go by, all the time.

Concentrate bus service in the poorer area's where it does make sense.