The new crosstown IS being built around Union Station. People are hoping that by saying Union Station will be "destroyed", they'll get people who don't bother to read the entire article all up in arms about destroying a beautiful building. We're talking about a couple of old rail lines going away, not the station. And there will still be rail lines existing...as many as cities like Chicago have for all of their mass transit. We've got a ways to go before we're so big we need more lines than Chicago.

It's nothing personal at all. I'm just saying how I understand that this is his big last battle. He wants to see it happen within his lifetime. Just like I'm happy that a new skyscraper is going to be built downtown within my lifetime. Just a simple observation is all that was. But, of course, being how a lot of people take things wrong on here--myself included--I figured it wasn't much time before anybody said anything about that. I'll be happy to remove it if anyone else is offended ;-)

EXACTLY!!! whatever this guy says doesn't matter, its getting built and we will still have union station and rail lines..... so why is there an argument, b/c he wants to keep rails that are completely covered with grass and rocks and dirt and so worn out they could never be used? its stupid!

Time to retell the highly relevant truth: A few years back, a documentary historian working for Parsons Brinkerhoff Engineers went with OKLAHOMAN columnist Ann DeFrange to Union Station. There, they talked about what was being threatened by ODOT. He explained that the State Historic Preservation Office's "mitigation" prescription for the planned destruction of the Robinson and Walker underpasses was to "photograph and document them" before ODOT smashed them to bits. DeFrange was duly horrified, as any reasonable person would be. Why would they do this? The historian's answer -- based on years of this kind of work -- was simple. "Highway builders don't care what they destroy," he said.

DeFrange printed his response verbatim in her story below a photo of one of the beautiful old balustrades along the top of the South Walker underpass.

This hit ODOT so hard that they reportedly threatened the historian and threatened his pay -- unless he "reinterviewed" with DeFrange and changed his statement.

This was done.

This is how it works at ODOT. This is how the plain truth is dealt with in ODOT's "culture."

Many people have told me, "It makes no sense."

Unfortunately, it makes a great deal of sense -- altogether too much sense -- to those who are willing to look at the sense it clearly makes. The question is -- do the people of Oklahoma and their elected representatives have the understanding, courage and fortitude to respond to such crass, arrogant affronts?

Bottom line: Union Station is NOT being destroyed and there will still be useable rail line adjacent to it.

Perhaps wishful thinking and mantra chanting is how some of us let ourselves out of our responsibilities. If any of the Union Station complex is important, all of it is important -- a good deal more important than any four miles of highway in the state.

Seriously? How many people travel through those four miles of highway compared to the Union Station complex?

Seriously.

Your question is interesting. It'd truly be interesting to know how many people and tons of goods passed through the Union Station corridor during its use by the SLSF and CRI&P Railroad Companies compared to ODOT's "fracture critical wonder." It'd be interesting to know how much comparative debt and comparative profit were made on each, and how much each cost the taxpayers. One thing is certain: US railroad performance and volume just during WWII was staggering, and that includes the urban / suburban and regional transit systems. And serving its builders, the Union Station facility didn't "cost tax money." It paid taxes.

Suffice it to say that the 80-year-old underpasses, more beautiful than anything ever built by ODOT, are still working just fine today, thank you. The Crosstown isn't even 50 years old.

To get down to cases, a modern single track railway has capacity for freight -- or anything else -- equivalent to a modern 20 lane expressway, all in a generally 50 to 100 foot wide right of way. Double tracking that line more than doubles its capacity -- and does so with far lower energy expense per ton-mile, one-third to one-fifth, far less negative environmental effect, far better maintainability, and far superior safety at far lower life-cycle cost.

Dallas DART Rail -- created with 115 lb per yard rail on concrete ties was built to a 100 year service life expectation, with no major maintnenance requirement for 40 years. Forty years is two, complete, standard Interstate Highway pavement service lives -- if the typically irresponsible politicians don't cave in to more of the trucking industry's efforts to increase legal gross weights or to further undermine weight enforcement capability.

The design of Union Station is elegantly functional, unquestionably historic and beautiful all at the same time.

Which of ODOT's highway projects meets any, let alone all of those qualifications?

Is it possible that one of the reasons the ODOT folks want this facility gone is that its very presence highlights their failures?

Seriously! Seriously. It's not about the past Tom. It's not about the future. It's about the NOW. The most critical aspect of any of this is there is not commuter rail in OKC as of today. Highway?! Yes, it exists and we need it replaced ASAP.

We don't need some rail yard to be preserved for the sole intention of one little group's interest to one day (20-50 years from now) have commuter rail service. I want to be able to enter downtown OKC from the west and not be scared to PERSONALLY drive my car on a brand new highway...

Sorry I don't have any links to stories from Denver or Dallas citing how OKC is making a critical mistake, hahahahahah...

Stop the histrionics. The facility is not going to be gone. The option for rail is not going anywhere either.

You'll have to pardon me for presenting actual facts -- while you chant your vague little mantras and diversionary happy talk. You might want to try getting up on your hind legs sometime and acting like a citizen instead of a "consumer," justifying whatever crumb the special-interest-lapdog bureaucrats want to toss your way.

The reality is that even the sadly evasive and disingenuous John Bowman, manager of ODOT's project, admits when pinned down by somebody with a little knowledge and an actual backbone that Union Station will be useless as a hub if his bosses' scheme is realized. So why has he publicly, officially insisted his project "won't hurt Union Station?" Because that's what they pay him to say.

Isn't it even a little strange -- even to you -- that our "Department of Transportation" thinks we need "ten lanes of expressway," but that we should be happy with one mainline and a siding at our Union Station?

Oh my God. What page do we have to go back to to find the arguments where everybody--myself included--thinks that Union Station is toooooooooooo small to be a hub???

With two tracks it will be a nice little stop off on your train set when that day comes. It doesn't need to be a hub and it never will be. We'll all be driving below grade in about 5 years. Again, it may tie in a lot of branches but there's not one single spot in OKC where all the rail lines converge & if there is, it's about a mile to the east.

BTW, nice snub at the top of your post. I got more brains than you think. I'm not some po' ole country boy who can't survive.

Again, this city's "current" source of transportation is roads. The only passenger service I currently see is buses and trolleys--which also use roads--and Amtrak, which as we all know uses the Santa Fe station and has no plans to go over to the old Oklahoma City Union Station. Keep on preaching brother. I just wish you had a formal choir behind you because so far everybody here is against you...besides old downtown guy.

That'd be wrong.

And why the snide tone? I mean really, it's a question of transportation development. Hardly an issue to get hot and bothered over. No one has challenged your honor or your intellect. Folks just have a different opinion than you do and if you read Tom's posts, his opinion, though it differs from yours is very well considered and thought through.

Two tracks is all the Metrarail has in Chicago. We're about one-sixth the size of Chicago, and one third the size of Illinois. I don't forsee a near future in which we need more lines than two for passenger rail. Nor do I want Union Station to ever be a hub, so I don't really care if Union Station is useless as a hub. There's a fundamental difference in philosophy here. There are plenty of people, me included, in favor of mass transit, but it doesn't necessarily all have to be rail, nor does Union Station have to be involved. Practicality is far more important than romanticization of our rail past and assuming that what worked then is best now. How much bigger and different is Oklahoma City and surrounds than when we last had passenger rail stopping at Union Station?

Tom is a propaganda machine that is totally and completely obsessed with this issue. He has no respect for anyone else's opinion if it detracts from his agenda and he refuses to answer very reasonable questions. Because of this, he has lost the respect of the vast majority of the posters on this board and has been completely ineffectual in gaining support for his cause.

Apparently you missed this rude, pompous paragraph that Tom directed at the other posters that was nothing short of a personal attack.

What might be harder not to miss is a tiny bit of not-too-subtle, which is to say "fairly obvious," humor -- confirming that some folks can "dish out" the trash talk, but they apparently can't take it. It's fun, occasionally, to fire a little bit of their kind of stuff back at 'em just to see.

Now -- let's see -- back to the issue at hand -- those who say Union Station rail facility is being destroyed because they understand that the existing facility could be a regional multimodal hub are apparently wrong because they're right... Because those who think they don't want it to be a hub, although they really don't understand what a hub is, want it to be destroyed so it can't ever be a hub. They just don't want anybody saying it's gonna be destroyed because that's "histrionic." Although that claim is made by folks who actually hope most of its train handling space is destroyed.

Do I have that about right? (Of course, I understand that being "right" necessarily makes me "wrong" in the opinion of those who don't want me saying the rail facility is being destroyed -- because they want it destroyed. They just don't want anybody stirring everybody up by saying so. Right?)

And we don't want a longstanding rail facility left there, at grade, because that would detract from our imaginary park -- but a ten lane expressway in a shallow ditch frothing night and day with cross-country semi trucks of every kind carrying cargoes of every kind as well as every kind of automobile from limos to boom-boom lowriders, boom-boom pickups, boom-boom SUVs, etc., is what we would like to see. Because that wouldn't detract from the imaginary park.

Do I get it yet?

I mean -- as long as we're going to deal with random opinion and not facts, I'm just trying to understand my fellow Oklahomans. Just trying to "blend in and be one of the crowd." (You are Oklahomans, aren't you? Which is why you want our historic assets destroyed? Just asking...)

Yep.

Yep.

I think maybe I have it now.

I think that's part of the problem - Tom thinks he's well considered and thought through, and so do most of the other posters who contradict him.

Personally, Tom has considered and thought through his points, but because most of his premise is that rail will see a massive resurgence in state-wide travel, the theory starts to fail.

I've met Tom, I've heard him talk, and I've seen his love for rail. That can't be questioned, nor can his knowledge of certain rail history. However, we can question what the best option for the development of rail in OKC can be.

My thoughts: If we have any type of intermodal exchange facility near downtown, it should only be between passenger modes of transportation, not for rail freight. Freight exchanges would be loud, 24-hour, and too expansive. Passenger exchange would take place between commuter, interstate, and streetcar rail and buses or taxis. This requires much less space, which therefore means we can use space other than Union Station for further development, space that makes more sense on the current large, busy line (BNSF).

I've heard that the Midwest City line from Bricktown to Tinker really has legs - if true, then Union Station wouldn't be in the picture at all, because the lines don't easily interchange. Using Santa Fe station, or maybe a new station in Bricktown itself, where tracks already exist, would be even easier than using Union Station...

With all due respect, Mid... and I due respect you greatly... Mr. Elmore's snide and dismissive tone certainly isn't winning any hearts and minds over to his point of view — at least for me.

I happen to be a proponent for mass transit, but I'm also REALISTIC. Mass transit is NOT a high priority to the vast majority of the general population in the OKC metro area, thus the NEED for it is greatly diminished. Our primary mode of transit in this city is our roads with the Crosstown being a critical artery within our transportation system. That critical artery is in dire need of replacement. That NEED is IMMEDIATE. At the present, exponentially more people need and are demanding an improved Crosstown as opposed to how many people are clamoring for mass transit, light rail or preserving Union Station.

I simply asked the question of Mr. Elmore because I was having a sincerely difficult time taking the following statement seriously...

There certainly are times when the need of the many SHOULD outweigh the "need" of the few. Right now, the need for a revitalized Crosstown — vital now and the foreseeable future — far outweighs the need to preserve Union Station, which may or may not be utilized in the not-so-near future.

It's easy to say you support transit -- it's a fine and noble concept. Politicians do it all the time. But do you actually support it if you don't support what's necessary to have it?

Talk is cheap. Work is expensive.

I can often answer reasonable questions about the technology and its capabilities in general terms, and, therefore, why the Union Station terminal is so well-suited to serve it, and I generally do so. However, what I've found in practical terms is that those who say they support something but don't support what's necessary to have it don't really support it at all.

Neal McCaleb and Gary Ridley will profess night and day to support the Heartland Flyer. They just didn't support implementing the original business plan for the train -- which would have made it self supporting from the beginning, given it and other services a real, near-term future with great potential benefit to the state, and taken it off "the highway lobby's whipping boy list."

Reality? They don't support passenger service at all. They use the Heartland Flyer's subsidy requirement, which they, themselves, created, to kick rail passenger service development, generally, as "unaffordable." There is no significant difference in the service as it operated on June 16, 1999 and today -- except for the millions of dollars unnecessarily down the rat hole over the last ten years supporting what should have been a financially independent service.

As sure as I'm sitting here, if McCaleb and Ridley and their favored special interests are allowed to destroy Union Station's rail facility, they'll then cry crocodile tears about it for the rest of their lives -- "We could have had a system if we'd been smart enough to keep the Union Station rail facility, but now, since you all let us destroy it, it's just way too expensive."

After all -- we don't work for them. They work for us. Right? Therefore, what they do, good or bad, is "on us." (...we knew dang well they wuz a snake before we took 'um in....)

The value of OKC Union Station is intrinsic, immutable and self-evident to those who understand the difficulties of the most difficult and yet most critical aspect of rail passenger / rail transit development -- which is getting a start. It's there, it's available, and it was built relatively late in the original heydey of commercial rail passenger services, representing something of a "distillation of all they knew," a "high water mark," sort of like the US Navy's Iowa-class battleships, which turned out to have a powerful modern use despite those who dismissed them as antiques.

What that means is that it would be hard to duplicate and nearly impossible to beat. And its preservation and intelligent reuse would benefit the entire state. Four miles of road, at best, is just four miles of road, making it as necessary as any other four miles of road. Along the way, however, to its hoped-for replacement, ODOT leadership apparently decided to use it for something else, as well -- and that was to preempt and preclude rail development by the unnecessary and generally unwanted destruction of the longstanding rail facility, a facility that had already been pledged for transit development in 1989. After all, "We were never gonna need rail..."

OKC Union Station's intelligent reuse would bring a new mobility, potentially to the entire state -- with strong portent of a revolution in quality of life and perhaps even in the state's basic economy.

We could have that, develop that -- straight away, with existing assets -- or we could allow the road lobby to destroy it for "the most important four miles of road in the state."

I have enough experience with bureaucrats and special-interest lobbies to know what that means -- and the Heartland Flyer, itself, is a good example of what that means, ten years later.

In short, if you're not willing to identify what's needed to achieve a goal, and, if required, fight for what's needed when it's time to fight, you're not even in the game.

You can take that for what it's worth. My colleagues and I are fighting for balanced multimodal transportation by fighting for what's manifestly required to have it. I guess my suggestion to others of good will would be, "lead, follow or -- well, you know..."

Tom, would people be willing to listen to you more if you were willing to answer questions, even if you don't like them, instead of simply trying to fillibuster your audience into submission?

Hi, Steve -- I don't mind your questions. It's just that I think you already know the answers to all of them. Meanwhile, while your employer's editorial writers take cheap shots at me, personally, its board and ownership have long had a standing offer to debate me publicly at a time and place of their own choosing on this matter about which they have so much to say.

If you want to ask somebody some questions, I'd suggest you ask them. I mean "the owners." What is their role in this matter. How do they stand to profit? And why are they so determined to destroy our historic rail center?

Tom, I don't know all the answers. And I'm not a part of the editorial board, and you know that. I've spent an entire week with some pretty critical coverage on my blog of the city's traffic engineers. But guess what - they've answered my questions, no matter how much they didn't like them.
If you'll recall, I was one of the early reporters to write all about your concerns. We walked the rail yard together, I took notes, and I posed your concerns to ODOT. And if you really read all the coverage on this issue, you should have no question as to how much I grilled ODOT during the early phases of this.
Show some guts Tom - answer my questions.

Tom, you are doing more to discredit yourself and your cause than The Oklahoman could ever do. You are the one dissuading people, like myself, who would typically be more sympathetic and supportive of your efforts, because your method of advocacy is so caustic.

I'll answer your questions in detail, Steve, when I get a few minutes -- which might be a few days.

And, Brad, I appreciate anyone who is willing to engage in discussions in forums like these under his or her actual name. I would observe, however, that if your support and willingness to work for preservation of Union Station is contingent on your perception of the "attitudes" of advocates who have fought their guts, their lives and their pocketbooks out for preservation and intelligent use of this one-of-a-kind facility for fifteen years, perhaps you don't know much about such work nor about people who would "bother" in this way.

I was a young man when I started this effort. As has been somewhat humorously pointed out on this thread recently, I'm "not quite so young anymore." And there are a good many others who have spent the efforts and time of their older age, together with significant portions of their substance keeping this effort alive.

I well remember, during my time as president of the Oklahoma Railway Museum, folks from one of the smaller, outlying area communities who showed up one night at one of our board meetings -- bitterly berating us because "we had stolen their locomotive."

The locomotive in question is the little blue 0-6-0T Porter tank engine sitting today on one of the platform tracks at the museum.

Somebody sicced them on us -- because the locomotive had served at a power plant near their community in the post-WWII years -- and it "should have been ours."

They "wanted it back," they said -- and that was all there was to it.

As we explained to them, as diplomatically as we could, if we had waited for them to get interested in saving that locomotive, there wouldn't be anything to argue about on this particular night. And, by the way, wagging a dead, 50 ton hunk of steel like that around during the intervening years wasn't necessarily the easiest thing to do.

My point is only to say that people "on the outside looking in" can be "awfully sensitive" sometime. What does that do for our state's economic future and for our grandchildren?