By the way -- the contention of some on this forum that I insist on somehow transforming OKC Union Station into a heavy, intermodal container yard of some kind is a complete misapprehension of how expedited mail and express freight was always handled at every passenger depot in the nation prior to 1967 -- and how it could be handled at these facilities again.

Passenger train-borne Mail and Express was a truly neat, innovative and flexible business. They moved the First Class Mail -- with clerks, each packing .38 revolver sidearm, hand-sorting and hand-canceling letters en route. (All Railway Post Office clerks were certified with their firearms. They were quite serious about the security of the Mail. The clerks were also expert with Thompson Submachineguns, sometimes issued for special payrolls and other extra-security cargoes.)

They moved daily package express, with express agents at small town depots meeting the public across station counters -- and those deep green "Railway Express" trucks with the Camel and Lucky Strke billboards on the sides covering every community, farm, creek road and backwater across the nation from the trackside depots. UPS is actually a direct corporate descendent of the old REA, "Railway Express Agency."

But they also moved very special loads like carload seafood inland from the coasts in refrigerated express cars. They moved show horses in special "Horse Express" cars with big, floor-to-ceiling, clamshell doors in both ends. (Read in local author and Mustang Head Librarian Desiree Morrison Webber's book, "The Buffalo Train Ride," how the Wichita Game Preserve was repopulated with American Bison -- brought from the Bronx Zoo in Horse Express Cars -- one month prior to statehood in 1907.) It wasn't "bulk freight." It was very special, very personal, expedited handling. They could literally move anything -- and did, in large measure because each small-town depot had its own company station agent who lived in the community, knew the business environment and was always thinking, quite independently, of the best ways his company could serve his neighbors.

I read of a man who rode his new motorcycle out west and then took the limited express passenger trains back home, big bike safely stowed in a head-end Baggage-Express car. (Heck -- you can't even take your dog or cat on an Amtrak train, which is just one of the reasons "I can't use 'em much...") Knowing some of the great, great Santa Fe station agents and even an Express Agent or two as I did when I was a kid, I can see him (or in some cases, "her,") never even blinking as the request was made. The railroads could do anything, and did -- every day. They were, truly, "general transportation agencies."

We need that spirit in Oklahoma again. With that spirit, encouraged and supported by leadership, we could reinvent American transportation, "Oklahoma style."

I think there must have even been a package express service on some of our Interurban trains.

Think about the possibilities.

Have you ever walked through the OKC Union Station Express and Mail Rooms?

It's an amazing place.

TOM ELMORE

There's nothing intrinsically noble about transporting mail. Let's set up a rail museum in Union Station to glorify all the old uses for rail. That, I think would be cool, and that would attract visitors. It doesn't mean it's practical to go back to the thirties and use rail like it was, or even that it's desirable. Unless you make airplanes and cars go away, and I seriously doubt that's going to happen in the near future, rail is going to be a novelty. How many people took the Heartland Flyer to Dallas to go to the OU-Texas game? How many peope drove? That data should be available.

We're trying to reinvent Oklahoma City. But, that reinvention needs to include downtown parks, retail and housing. Transportation, especially to and from small cities in Oklahoma City, is not going to reinvent Oklahoma City, unless you think we're going to have thousands of people from Shawnee and El Reno coming into Oklahoma City daily to shop and work. If so, where's your data? Not people coming in to Tinker from Shawnee to work.....that doesn't help downtown OKC. Not going to Shawnee to go to the casinos....that doesn't help downtown OKC. I haven't seen how much money all these little cities are willing to contribute anywhere either. If they're the primary beneficiaries, they need to be showing us the money.

Anyone who says they're trying to reinvent OKC can NOT be in favor of redecking the Crosstown, or maintaining it in its' current location. I understand that OnTrac has figured out that idea was way off base, but the fact that it was even being mentioned a few months ago shows that reinvention of OKC was never the primary motivation for rail preservation by OnTrac.

Why are we still talking about this?

Fact 1 - Union Station is not currently used as a train station.
Fact 2 - There is not a plan by anyone to use Union Station as a train station.
Fact 3 - The 2 existing active rail lines passing by Union Station will not be removed.
Fact 4 - Union Station will not be torn down.

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

Amen Kerry. Every time I see a post from Tom, all I hear is Blah Blah Blah Blah Blah Blah Blah Blah.....and 9 pages of it too.

That's cool. I love history, and am always fascinated by how people did things back in the old days. Honestly I am. I think Route 66 is cool, and we as a state should do more to highlight this very important part of our history and culture. I love Art Deco buildings, and if I'd designed the new Devon Energy building, it would have been done in such a style. It would look like it was built in the 30s.

That all said, times change and doing things the old way just isn't efficient anymore. I know that rail still serves a very important function for shipping, but it will never be as important as it once was. I think fedoras are cool, but nobody wears them anymore.

Nothing intrinsically noble about transporting mail?

Really?

And do you suppose they're still using cars and airplanes in Dallas, Denver, Salt Lake, Sacramento, Albuquerque, San Diego, etc. -- where rail transit has, indeed, powerfully redeveloped and renenergized entire areas? Ask any of 'em if they'd now trade their rail systems for "MAPS" (which, you may recall, was supposed to fund the beginning of our own rail transit revolution until Istook "took it to Utah" with cover provided by Oklahoma's largest newspaper...)

By the way -- Union Station wasn't purchased with a federal transit grant in 1989 to become a "museum." It was purchased to be our regional transit center. Yes -- for the current cost of "a new off ramp at Robinson..."

Why don't you folks come out from behind your "e-pseudonyms" and tell us why you refuse to make sense?

TOM ELMORE

I have read all 21 pages of this thread and have a question that from it. If OKC is wanting mass transit and the citizens of OKC are paying for it, is it only going to be within our city limits and other cities would have to pay to connect? How would that work? I am talking about Edmond, Moore, Norman, MWC, Shawnee, Yukon and El Reno. Would those cities have to pass taxes to extend our rail?

Off track: This train really has left the station
The Oklahoman Editorial
Published: October 29, 2008

The train zealots are at it again, this time urging that the route of the new Interstate 40 Crosstown Expressway be altered so as to preserve Union Station as a possible rail hub. Can they possibly be serious?

Members of a group called OnTrac want the Crosstown to be built about 250 feet south of the route that’s now under construction. Earth to OnTrac: This isn’t some sort of erector set you’re dealing with. It’s a multimillion-dollar project that’s been thoroughly vetted.

A brief review: The need to do something about the current I-40 Crosstown became apparent in 1989, when a crack was found in the elevated portion of the road. In 1993, the federal government helped fund a study of what should be done. Two years later, a consultant was selected.

In January 1996, the first of many public hearings was held as part of a study period that lasted nearly seven years. The route that came to be chosen was settled on only after two rail companies merged — and stopped using all but a few of the lines in the affected area.

Rail company representatives attended every technical advisory committee meeting along the way. An official with the Oklahoma Department of Transportation says the agency has held thousands of conversations with rail representatives and enthusiasts since this process began. Oh, and one more thing — big, bad ODOT is spending $60 million on rail improvements in the area near Union Station.

"All we’re asking is that we be allowed to discuss this,” an OnTrac mouthpiece lamented Monday. Please.

Are Oklahoma rail advocates serious? As serious as Utahans enthusiastically packing the 60 fast, daily Front Runner commuter trains now linking Ogden and Salt Lake / Provo to Tinker competitor Hill AFB (today, the only Air Logistics Center in the nation with oil-crisis-proof workforce mobility). As serious as 80,000 Metroplex commuters using Dallas Area Rapid Transit's burgeoning rail network every day and 60,000 Denverites using RTD Rail, both systems about to triple in size to meet demand. As serious as more than a million New Mexicans who've used Albuquerque's amazing Rail Runner Express commuter service since its 6-14-06 inauguration. How about the daily rail transit users in Nashville, Seattle, Portland, Sacramento, San Diego, Houston, Little Rock, St. Louis and soon Phoenix and Austin?

Were University of North Texas economists serious when they announced, five years into DART Rail service, that the most valuable commercial property in the area was by then any along the rail transit lines? And the stunning redevelopment success of Mockingbird Station? ... or McKinney Avenue?

The biggest transportation news in the West is the overwhelming success of these new rail transit systems. Didn't you read it in THE OKLAHOMAN? --- No?

By the time most of these "new transit cities" had awakened to the amazing power of the systems to improve their economies, much of the train handling space at their own historic central terminals had been lost. All regret it -- and many have repeatedly urged OKC, home of the West's last, unused Union Station boasting all its original rail yard space, to jealously preserve and reuse it to replicate their success. Union Station, nexus of Oklahoma's 866 miles of state-owned railway, is OKC's great competitive advantage, apparently stubbornly unrecognized by certain newspaper folks.

Oklahoma rail advocates -- thousands of us -- are determined to make the most of our elegantly designed Union Station, purchased, by the way, with a federal transit grant for exactly that purpose in 1989, considerably predating ODOT's inexplicable and completely unnecessary plan to cripple its yard capacity.
Was ODOT, whose policies have stuck Oklahoma's grandchildren with $40 billion in unfunded highway maintenance need "serious" when, in the mid-90s, it assigned this treasure, with its 8-block-long, grade separated rail terminal yard a value of "zero?"

The train, has, indeed, "left the station" in just about every metro in the West except Oklahoma City, and that is "serious," indeed.

An issue with Kerry's oft repeated 4 facts are the locked in time mode of the argument.

Perhaps I read all this wrong, but isn't the central argument preserving the railyard space itself? Lots of folks who seem to be bent on Tom E go away write reams on the station and on the tracks adjoining the station, but I sense if the building were toppled by a storm tonight, the fight by Tom E and Ontrac and others for that railyard would continue unabated. It's the potential being fought for, not the present day reality.

Is it the right fight. I don't know. I see some sense it and if the railyard has true value as a future rail hub and it could be preserved by such a slight shift, I'm rather amazed it wasn't long ago just to put an end to it all.

But, back to the undeniable facts. The trouble with such a position can be demonstrated by looking back a mere 25 years.

1. Oklahoma City has no major league franchise.
2. No major league franchise has approached OKC about relocation.
3. There is no suitable major league venue in OKC.
4. There is no plan to add a venue suitable for a major league franchise.

In its day, I believe each of the above was also an undeniable fact. Fortunately for the round ball fanatics, such facts were not brought down from the mountaintop, meant to stand the test of time. So, perhaps this season's 4 undeniable facts are also not written in stone.

Time will tell, and that dear folk, is an undeniable fact.

Kevin - the only thing missing in your attempt at undeniable facts is that there was a plan put in place by people that had the authority to see the plan through. Once someone with the authority put in a rail system proposes that Union Station play a central role in regional transit system then the 4 undeniable facts will need to be updated. But don't worry, I am ready for that with another set of undeniable truths.

Now back to our regularly scheduled program: blah blah ODOT evil blah blah blah Utah blah blah Istook blah blah blah ODOT evil blah blah blah...

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

From: PUBLIC AFFAIRS, US DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION

DOT 157-08
Friday, October 24, 2008
Contact: Brian Turmail
Tel.: (202) 366-4570

New August Data Show Americans Drove 15 Billion Fewer Miles than a Year Ago, U.S. Transportation Secretary Mary Peters Announces
Travel Changes Demonstrate Need for New Way to Fund Transportation

DALLAS – New federal data show Americans are continuing a 10-month-long decline in driving habits, U.S. Secretary of Transportation Mary Peters announced today. The decline is putting new pressure on the way road, bridge and transit projects are funded at a time of record growth in transit ridership, showing the need for a new approach for funding transportation construction, she added

“We pay for transit the same way we pay for road and bridge projects – with federal gas taxes,” said Secretary Peters, who made the announcement during a visit to a light rail station under construction in Dallas. “Relying on the gas tax is like relying on cardboard to keep the rain out – the longer you use it the less it works.”

In August 2008, Americans drove 15 billion fewer miles, or 5.6 percent less, than they did in August 2007 – the largest ever year-to-year decline recorded in a single month, Secretary Peters said. She added that over the past 10 months, Americans have driven 78 billion fewer miles than they did in the same 10 months the previous year. Texans alone drove 1.3 million fewer miles, the Secretary added.

Transit ridership, meanwhile, saw an increase of 6.2 percent this summer compared to last, said Secretary Peters. In Texas, the DART rail system saw an increase of 15 percent this summer, one of the largest in its 12-year history, she noted.

She said that since 2001, the Department has invested over $8 billion to finance over 280 miles worth of new transit lines, which, taken together, would be 25 percent longer than the New York City subway system. She warned that future projects, however, could be at risk if we continue to rely on gas taxes to fund transit construction.

She said a plan to significantly reform federal transportation policy the Administration unveiled earlier this year would address that challenge by making it easier for states to attract new sources of funding for transportation projects. “With this new approach to funding transportation projects, we can ensure that Big D has Grade-A transit service for years to come.”

People drove less because of the price of gasoline. It happened in Atlanta too. People suddenly discovered MARTA when they'd been refusing to ride for years. Look for people to start driving again if gas prices stay lower. I'm not necessarily saying that's a good thing, but I'd be shocked if it didn't happen.

During the Arab oil embargo, when gas wasn't readily available, people started buying more fuel efficient cars. Once gas was plentiful again, they stopped and went back to their gas guzzlers.

It takes more than high cost of automobile transportation to increase ridership. Mass transit has to be relatively fast, not involve multiple transfers, and take people precisely where they want to go, in addition to heavy traffic and/or high gas prices.

You know -- the funny thing is that if you don't have quality transit, you can't use it when you need it.

We're way, way behind. We need all of the Union Station terminal yard and all of our state rail assets -- and we need to start aggressively developing all of it right now.

ODOT's argument justifying its goofy assessment of the value of Union Station was, "Well, it's not being used now."

We assume they'd probably have chopped up the lifeboats on the Titanic for firewood before the ship left its home port. After all, they "weren't being used right then," and the ship was unsinkable.

Right?

TOM ELMORE

1) Point to the facts until they're defeated by reality. 2) Point to history until you understand the reasons that things change 3) Point to macro elements (drivers using mass-trans) until they're exposed as the result of high gas prices. 4) Repeat, ad-nauseum.

It reminds me of the courtroom lawyer's tactic: If the facts are on your side, then bang on the facts. If the law is on your side, then bang on the law. If neither is on your side, then bang on the table.

You seem to miss that transit use is still trending upward despite the recent plummeting of gasoline prices. "Sudden cheap gas" is, to any observant individual, as scary as the skyrocketing ascent of prior months.

Many Americans suddenly "get it." But ODOT keeps pretending it's "1955."

Any possibility that unnecessarily expensive transportation may get to be a real drag on family budgets as the world economy struggles to find its feet? Anybody in Oklahoma wanna be "ready for that?"

Naaah...

(I'm thinking at this moment about the inverted bathtub ripped out of a Moore house flattened by the May 3rd, 1999 tornado. Scrawled on its side with spray paint were the bitter words, "Okie Storm Shelter.")

What if people discover that transportation is really "just transportation" -- that "your car doesn't really say a thing about who you are," that in the most expensive automobile in the world, any occupant is seated only on his-or-her own rump, and that it was a danged expensive illusion that GM, Ford and Madison Avenue successfully sold us all those years? (43,000 lives per year +...)

Wanna talk about illusions and reality? How about tying the day-to-day operation of the our critical business base to a trucking industry that can't even get out of its own way -- that comes nowhere near covering its actual operating costs on public roads -- but, thanks to 60 years of massive, ongoing subsidy, has taken most of the profit out of self-supporting modes?

Trucking and its highway-lobby cousins are certainly under no illusion about what's going on. They're in Washington lobbying for tax credits for the nation's railroads so there'll be more trains on more tracks to carry more trucks. Meanwhile -- here in Oklahoma -- the rocket scientists at ODOT struggle to rip the obvious heart out of our own amazing rail network -- with the functional complicity of presumably educated people who are nevertheless apparently so married to their own fantasies and illusions that they can't seem to figure out who to believe.

Boomer Sooner.

Viva Union Station.

TOM ELMORE
(OU '78)

I thought we weren't talking about trucking in the same breath as Union Station?

If Union Station is the heart of our rail industry, why aren't any of the railroads using it? Is it possible they think there are better locations for their business?

No one is arguing with you about rail traffic. If you can prove that people from outlying cities in OKLAHOMA (not Utah or Texas) will use rail in such numbers that it is cost effective and or significantly energy efficient, we're all for it. I'm not interested in rail as a piece of history, but as a means to increased the urbanization and density of our city. I may be selfish, but I'm more interested in making life easier and more enjoyable for people who actually live in Oklahoma City. I'm not as worried about people who choose to live in Edmond, Norman, El Reno or Shawnee. Again, if we can prove that they are all going to come to downtown Oklahoma City to recreate and shop, hooray! Let's give them a rail system (with their financial input) to make that easier and more energy efficient.

No one is arguing that piggybacks and rail aren't an excellent marriage. I personally would love to see allmost all long distance trucking utilize rail, with trucks only used to deliver goods short distances. But, that doesn't have to be via Union Station. It would destroy our plans for Core to Shore and revitalization of downtown were Union Station to be used for commercial rail.

On to the more important question and the subject of this thread. If we determine that there's really good reason to make it easy for people from those cities to come to Oklahoma City frequently and in large numbers, why does that place they all come have to be Union Station? There's where I disagree with the rail enthusiasts, who seem to be putting adulation of history ahead of common sense.

We're not arguing so much about rail as good or bad in this thread, as we're arguing about the location of one station, which, as Kerry is fond of stating, will not be destroyed regardless of what happens. Actually, I happen to think that using it as a multimodal hub will be more likely to destroy its' beauty and our ability to appreciate that beauty than my hopes for it. I also happen to think that, especially for anyone traveling north or south, the location of Union Station is so poor that it won't be used by the majority of people who might be coming to Oklahoma City to shop or recreate. It would be a poor utilization of a wonderful resource.

Viva my plan for Union Station!
OUHSC ('85)

Alec Baldwin: "The, the, ...global warming and... corporate America and..."

Let me explain to you how this works: you see, the corporations finance ODOT, and then ODOT goes out... and the corporations sit there in their... in their corporation buildings, and... and, and see, they're all corporation-y... and they make money.

warreng88 - you are way off. You didn't mention Istook, Utah, or the Mormons. You can't have a conspiracy theory without a shadow quazi-religious organization pulling strings behind the scenes.

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

We're not supposed to talk about trucks?

Sorry, Betts, but by its charter, North American Transportation Institute works on intermodal and multimodal transportation. We recognize that together in a synergistic mix, the modes become more than the sum of their parts. We recognize the value of all.

If you want to talk to people who close their eyes to one element or another, or who refuse to speak honestly about what's already been achieved through intermodal / multimodal strategies, you'll have to talk to ODOT. Or perhaps, visit the "Oklahoma Transportation Center" at OSU -- which claims to be a world-class, academic transportation research center, but "has never worked on anything but roads."

Not at all strange when you take a look at its board. You could nearly be convinced its just sort of another public false-front for the highway and trucking lobbies. But, of course, it's funded with public dollars, up to and including $3.5 million federal dollars per year, provided without concrete explanation or stated goal by Inhofe and Istook.

NATI doesn't talk about "just one mode." In fact, most of our work through the years has actually been directed at reforming highway management. "How can there be an expectation of proper public roadway maintenance in the absence of any effort to accurately and comprehensively recover use costs?" "Considering its profound public road problems, why haven't Oklahoma's leaders ever bothered to nail down what's now being paid versus what ought to be paid by each road user, via an honest Highway Cost Allocation Study?"

Seems simple and reasonable enough, doesn't it? Except that the alleged experts at ODOT aren't interested. They and their handlers appear to like things the way they are. Is it possible they "don't want to know" because then it would be possible for everybody else to know?

TOM ELMORE

Touche!

Huh? Yesterday you said Union station was only going to be used for commercial mail transport in your world view. I'm not sure what all your multimodal talk is about, since the mode that is completely incompatible with Oklahoma City's plans for Core to Shore is commercial trucking. That is an unacceptable concept, IMO, and I suspect in a lot of other people's eyes as well. If that's what you're talking about, no way Jose. If you're not (because I'm not completely sure WHAT you're saying), then who cares? This is the Union Station thread, not the we want trains to haul piggybacks and use public highways less thread. That is a completely different issue.

With respect, ma'am, "Union Station" is a Union Station. It not only "unites" rail lines, but streets, and via these, air transport and ultimately even other modes. That's what a multimodal hub is supposed to do.

Name for me a business downtown that doesn't rely on truck delivery and shipping. It goes on, hour-after-hour, every day.

So it is at a metropolitan surface transportation center. And it's done in such an efficient and unobtrusive way as to work beautifully with "passenger modes."

It's required for success.

By the way -- I'm now hearing rumblings from Capitol Hill about school and work drive-time conflicts between freight trains and arterial street traffic. Union Station was designed and built to eliminate such conflicts. Now, the alleged experts at ODOT, oblivious to our warnings, are trying to recreate them.

Nuts?

You bet it is.

TOM ELMORE

Sorry, but I'm vehemently against the truck mode for anything other than deliveries. Uniting air transport with a station is fine. That doesn't mean there will be airplanes pulling up to gates at Union Station. Trucks and airplanes are aesthetic unfriendly, from a noise, smell and visual standpoint. That's why airports aren't downtown. Trucks don't belong in residential/recreational/retail areas either, except for unobtrusive deliveries of necessary products. If we want to remove urban blight, we don't need trucks and warehouses. Those can go south of the river, where trains are actually running. We don't need to obsess over the prior use of a station. As was aptly demonstrated on this very forum, an old power plant can become a retail center, a warehouse can become an art gallery. These are not tragedies. Union Station can be a fabulous place everyone wants to visit without trains or trucks.