Here's a great opportunity to get "all your questions answered."

TOM ELMORE
____________________________

"WHY OKC UNION STATION RAIL TERMINAL IS IMPORTANT AND HOW WE CAN SAVE IT!!"

Join ONTRAC's Marion Hutchison for a presentation and/or see action alert below

(Oklahomans for New Transportation Alternatives Coalition - ONTRAC)

April 14 - 7:00 p.m.

Gold Dome (2nd floor) - NW 23rd & Classen - OKC

(enter through west door by the Prohibition Room restaurant)

Oklahoma City Union Station’s terminal facility provides us a rare opportunity to:

(a) quickly and affordably develop an effective commuter rail and light rail system that will serve the Oklahoma City metropolitan area and Central Oklahoma well into the future,

(b) take advantage of significant federal funding for rail transit hubs and systems,

(c) ensure the transportation and economic future for the Oklahoma City metropolitan area and Central Oklahoma

(d) anchor and stimulate Oklahoma City’s important and valuable Core to Shore redevelopment plans, and

(e) reduce ozone and green house gases.

A decision to resolve this issue in favor of preserving the Union Station Terminal Facility by the Oklahoma City Council could end the standoff. Support is growing in the community and on the City Council. It is a win /win solution that would provide the multimodal rail hub and infrastructure so critical to a successful public transportation system.

You can also read the Oklahoma Sierra Club Chapter’s Resolution to preserve the terminal on our website Oklahoma Chapter and more information is available here: OnTrac | Oklahomans for New Transportation Alternatives Coalition

You've given me no reason to believe you're willing to answer my questions.

That does not answer any questions that Steve Lackmeyer asked. Maybe you should take Mike Morgan's advice...

There's no "standoff" Tom. Construction is moving along on the new Crosstown.

maybe someone can just go "take care" of the tracks for us...then we won't have to worry about it...

We don't have to. The tracks in the switching yard were removed years ago...Tom is fighting for the dirt.

Folks, come on! This is getting silly. Maybe Tom does occasionally drop a rant with the same talking points, but this is getting out of hand. I mean, seriously. Every time Tom posts something, the same people keep complaining...let it go.

Please, please, quit rattling the cage!

33 pages of dropping rants? The reason the same people are complaining is because we're the only ones dumb enough to keep reading the thread.

Tulsa World: Obama rail plans include Tulsa, Oklahoma City

I don't have any problem with high speed rail, as long as it's cost and energy effective, which might be a stretch, but that has nothing to do with Union Station. You're posting in the wrong thread, however: http://www.okctalk.com/okc-metro-are...llas-more.html

High Speed regional / intercity rail fits OKC Union Station quite precisely. That's what a multimodal hub is all about -- bringing intercity trains, regional commuter trains and local trolley and/or light rail services and their bus network counterparts together at a common metropolitan marshalling and interchange point.

As an example, Bombardier's "Jet Train" power unit is an extension of the company's successful "Acela" tilt-train technology, designed to operate on conventional, unelectrified lines, and available now.

With OKC Union Station's terminal yard left intact, Oklahoma City could rapidly become a center for advanced rail passenger services. Loss of the yard would be a tremendous setback. As the new US administration appears poised to move ahead rapidly, there's plainly no time for such setbacks in cities that would become strategic centers for these developments.

Advanced Intercity Rail cannot work effectively alone. Optimum usefulness requires the connectivity available only at modern multimodal hubs. Multimodal synergism is required and quality hubs are a key and indispensable ingredient. This is why OKC Union Station's elegant rail facility is so overwhelmingly vital to the state and region's future, and why this thread is exactly the right thread for any discussion of high speed rail -- for those who understand the relevant questions.

By threatening the obvious, already available central hub for such development, ODOT is clearly threatening the state's place in a national high speed rail network.

What's the most important thing we can do, here and now, to ensure the success of advanced rail passenger services in Oklahoma? We can save the Union Station rail terminal yard.

TOM ELMORE

Hard not to note the acres and acres of sodded roadbeds on the "New Crosstown," and that the OKC Union Station rail yard with its depot tunnels and arterial street underpasses remains untouched...

Interesting, also, that the state's largest newspaper published its own edit of Tim Talley's AP news story.

http://newsok.com/rail-line-outcome-...rticle/3365551

Ruling could delay Crosstown Expressway work
By Tim Talley
Associated Press

OKLAHOMA CITY – The most expensive highway construction project ever undertaken by the state could be delayed if a federal agency denies an application to relocate a railway line that lies directly in the project's path, officials said Wednesday.

The federal Surface Transportation Board is considering a request by the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway Co. to relocate about a mile of rail line it owns in Oklahoma City that is in the path of the Interstate 40 Crosstown Expressway relocation project.

Construction of the $500 million, 4.5-mile relocation project has already begun and completion is scheduled for 2012, said Gary Ridley, director of the Oklahoma Department of Transportation and Gov. Brad Henry's transportation secretary. But no construction work can begin on that one-mile stretch until the rail line issue is resolved, Ridley said.

"It's in the hands of the STB," Ridley said. He said the agency has been seeking public comments about the plan and that it is not known when it will decide the issue.

"It's been some time," Ridley said.
Although the rail line issue has not yet delayed the project's completion date, the area will become part of the critical path of the Crosstown relocation project this year and a decision must be handed down within the next 30 to 60 days to avoid construction delays, Ridley said.

"It's getting fairly close," the ODOT director said. "We're optimistic that the ruling will come down that will allow this to be done."

But a critic of the Crosstown project said it should have never been launched until the state had control of all of the right of way it needed for the project.

Tom Elmore of the North American Transportation Institute, which promotes transportation issues including rail, also said relocation of the BNSF rail line will disrupt a critical east-west rail path that connects southwest Oklahoma with eastern parts of the state.

"Why would the highway department try to destroy the state's rail center?" Elmore said. "We're in the catbird seat for railway development. We're a shovel-ready project waiting for an opportunity.

"Why is ODOT trying to rip the center out from our railway network? Why does the Department of Transportation want to cripple our rail capacity?" Elmore said.

Although BNSF filed the relocation request and the state is not directly involved, the state will pay for relocating the line as part of the Crosstown project, Ridley said.

The project requires grading, drainage and construction of a railroad bridge. Eventually the new Crosstown Expressway will go under that railroad bridge, according to transportation officials. The new stretch of roadway where the rail line is now located will be 8 to 10 feet deep.

The project's total cost will rise to $600 million if a planned boulevard is built along parts of the existing roadway's path, Ridley said.

The board, which is affiliated with the Department of Transportation, was created in 1995 and succeeded the Interstate Commerce Commission. It is an economic regulatory agency whose fundamental mission is to resolve railroad rate and service disputes and review proposed railroad mergers.

The relocation request was filed after the board last June reversed an earlier decision that gave the railroad authority to abandon and discontinue use of the line to facilitate the highway relocation project.

BNSF had claimed that the line should be abandoned because no local traffic had moved over the line for at least two years prior to the railroad's abandonment request in September 2005, according to the board's ruling.

But the board said evidence presented by opponents of the move, including photographs allegedly showing a train being pulled by two BNSF locomotives, indicated that BNSF's assertion "was false or misleading," the board's decision states.

Are you freaking kidding me? Did you run out of the crap you paste here and now you're finding articles with your own name in them that are just as worthless?

Tom, I am so tired of you being the lone voice in favor of the railyard. If you are the reason why construction is delayed, I will do everything in my power to petition ODOT and city leaders to continue building the new I-40 and eventual boulevard.

I think its time we start a petition in favor of construction on OKCTalk and submit it to leaders. Tom please grow up and move on. Let our city revitalize itself, don't hold us back with an unused rail system.

What boggles my mind is that 2nd paragraph. THE FREAKING LINE HAS ALREADY BEEN RELOCATED SINCE, LIKE, 2007. I WENT AND TOOK PICTURES!

Tom's definitely not alone on this. It's just that he has the energy to talk to brick walls whose opinions don't really matter. And yes, I readily admit my hypocrisy in that I gleefully argue with brick walls in other places.

If nothing else, ODOT has gone about this project in an utterly incompetent manner at best, at worst, they committed fraud on the Department of Transportation. If they'd have dotted their I's and crossed their T's, things would be much clearer at this point.

-- really? a petition from OKCTalk? I needed a good chuckle.

i would be hard for ODOT to have committed fraud in this .. since they are not the ones that petitioned the DOT

The alleged fraud is that they represented the BNSF line as 'abandoned' when it was still being used. Procedurally, I don't see what you're saying. Theoretically speaking, of course, one entity can just about always commit fraud on another entity. Since ODOT =/= the Department of Transportation (the guys who oversee these rail lines), I don't see the problem with that.

I do realize that BNSF is who actually made the claim that the lines were abandoned, but I don't see how/why they would have made that assertion. The situation seems very 'not-on-the-level' to me.

> but I don't see how/why they would have made that assertion.

If memory serves, permission to dispose of a line or segment of a line, in non-use for a requisite amount of time, can be fast tracked procedurally. To drop an active line requires the requesting party to leap a few extra, and time consuming, hurdles.

Of course, misrepresentation, if discovered, can, and has, add a whole lot more time to the process, esp[ecially if the ruling were to resemble go back to a very blank page 1 and restart your application process.

If that happens, the delay rests squarely with those who fudged, not those who cried foul about it, or those who hold fudging isn't proper.

I think they made the claim because the line was not active past a certain point. They happened to use the line once to store cars and a picture was taken. It's hardly a reason to call it an "active" line.

That's one account of the situation.

-- and doesn't that constitute use? I'm sure there's all kinds of law on that for people who have the time/energy/money to search the relevant databases.

IF that constitutes "use", then the law and/or the definition is ridiculous.

Law often doesn't make any damned sense.

If it did, you wouldn't need to hire lawyers.

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