I read in the journal record the other day that Tulsa had put in, and been granted, $8 million to convert their bus fleet to CNG. It didn't sound like OKC had done the same.

I saw that, seemed like Tulsa was getting a bunch of that money and OKC was just passing the opportunity right on by....

Actually, OKC will be getting over $10 million in stimulus funds for transit. This will fund bus and paratransit van replacement, improvements to maintenance facilities, and AVL, among other things.

Full information is available on the Metro Transit website. Look under "Stimulus Funding Update."

PIEDMONT SURREY-GAZETTE
A Train Wreck in Slow Motion

A tragedy is slowly unfolding in the center of Oklahoma City, and this week it moved a step closer toward its apparently inexorable conclusion when federal officials ruled in favor of a corporate Goliath over a lonely David who had literally thrown himself in front of a train in valiant effort to prevent the now imminent wreck.

The Goliath in this case is the BNSF Railway, formerly called the Burlington Northern and Santa Fe Railway, while the David was Oklahoma City resident Dr. Edwin Kessler, who tried to prevent the abandonment of a key piece of track that could have been part of a future rail transportation center for central Oklahoma.

A ruling May 19 by the Surface Transportation Board permits BNSF to abandon a portion of the former Frisco Rail Road mainline that serves the old Oklahoma City Union Station and paves the way for the Oklahoma Dept. of Transportation to proceed with construction of a segment of the new I-40 on a planned route that will obliterate the switching yard and related infrastructure around the station.

The station was purchased by Oklahoma City many years ago for use as the hub of a new rail transit system. The pending destruction of the yard will make that plan impossible, squandering the investment taxpayers made in purchasing the property, and raising the cost of a new system by hundreds of millions of dollars. It is ironic that this is occurring at a time when Oklahoma City Mayor Mick Cornett is trumpeting plans for a new rail system plan as a part of MAPS 3.

The sad reality is that the people of Oklahoma City already voted to get trains rolling into Union Station as part of the first MAPS election, at a time when the city qualified for an additional $18 million in federal funds.
The results of that election were single-handedly overturned by former U.S. Rep. Ernest Istook, who misused his power to block the use of federal funds for bringing trolleys back to Oklahoma City, claiming that such a system was not needed here. Union Station would now be in use had Istook not blocked that voter-approved rail system.

Instead, he substituted $3 million for the purchase of shuttle buses built to resemble trolleys and which now fraudulently masquerade as such. The remaining $15 million was subsequently made available to Salt Lake City for use on their new light rail system, where Istook’s efforts on behalf of that system were hailed by officials there.

Oklahoma was no better served by the Surface Transportation Board, which in its decision last week derided concerns over what impact the loss of the yard might have on a new rail system as too “speculative” to warrant consideration.

We won’t try to fathom what was going on in the minds of the “wizards” at ODOT when they selected their planned route, but if their goal was to find the one which would do the most damage possible to the people and transportation infrastructure of Oklahoma City, they succeeded.

Now that the Surface Transportation Board has swept aside the valiant Dr. Kessler, nothing stands between the ODOT juggernaut and Oklahoma City’s endangered, precious asset. The impending train wreck is proceeding in slow but accelerating motion, and we are left to wonder if anyone has the wisdom or the courage to stop it.

ERIC BERGER

Tom, look at the bright side. Though we will be spending *vastly* more money to rebuild a rail hub at some point, we can build it for where it belongs at that point in the city's development.

I don't think there's much use in crying over spilt milk at this point.

Hey Tom, do you have any thoughts to share about Coffee Slingers?

Well played.

Mods, I suggest you merge the coffee slingers thread with this one.

So we give a crap about a little Piedmont paper why?

QUOTE: The station was purchased by Oklahoma City many years ago for use as the hub of a new rail transit system. The pending destruction of the yard will make that plan impossible, squandering the investment taxpayers made in purchasing the property, and raising the cost of a new system by hundreds of millions of dollars.

OK, so not to be the party pooper here, but let's bring some facts into this latest posting by Tom Elmore. First of all, I'm always skeptical of unattributed information in un-bylined stories or editorials.

Where, I ask, is the accountability?

So, let's go back to when the city bought Union Station - did they really intend for the depot to be used for rail again? We're blessed to have a report below by one of the greatest journalists ever at The Oklahoman, Mary Jo Nelson (a member of the Oklahoma Journalism Hall of Fame):

Railroad Station Gets New Life

By Mary Jo Nelson, Ellie Sutter


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Thursday, August 10, 1989
Edition: CITY, Section: NEWS, Page 01

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
New life awaits the national landmark Union Station, a once-bustling railroad terminal at 300 SW 7, extensively restored early in this decade.

Opened originally in 1930, the twice-abandoned terminal is destined to become a MassTrans bus transfer point.


Trustees of the Central Oklahoma Transportation and Parking Authority on Wednesday approved a covenant pledging to maintain the building as an historic site, a federal requirement for funding the city's purchase of the property.


The pledge was required by the Urban Mass Transit Authority, from which Oklahoma City seeks a $1.2 million grant to buy the depot.


The station is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and was restored for offices and warehousing by Oklahoma City businessman Thurman Magbee. Its 55,000 square feet of floor space includes 15,000 square feet of tunnels and underground passages.


Terry Pattillo, COTPA director, said the transit agency grant would be matched by $400,000 from Liberty National Bank and Trust Co., which owns the property, to secure it for the city.


Pattillo said Liberty is forgiving $400,000 of the purchase price, which can be applied for grant-matching purposes.


Magbee bought the property in 1978, after two years of negotiations with the Frisco and Rock Island Railroads. It had been abandoned for about 10 years and had been virtually wrecked by vandals and neglect.


Magbee unveiled the Union Station Trade Center in 1982, after spending three years and an undisclosed amount of money converting it to offices and warehousing, a restoration designed by the architectural firm of Noftsger, Lawrence, Lawrence and Flesher.


By mid-1986, Magbee sought to convert the station's underground vaults and passages to secured records storage and safe deposit zones.


Financing was arranged at one point, but the project was never finished.


The building went on the sale block in 1987. Magbee deeded the property to Liberty National Bank and Trust Co. in lieu of foreclosure, bank officers said at the time.


COTPA trustees will send the deed covenant to the Oklahoma City Council for approval Tuesday. From there the matter goes to the Oklahoma State Historical Society, responsible for protecting the building's historic status.


Pattillo said the grant from UMPTA is expected about Sept. 30. At the outset, the station will house offices for city, state and COTPA transportation planners, while some city MassTrans buses will begin using it as a transfer point.


"Ultimately, we'll move the entire transfer system there," Pattillo said. That includes a station now located south of Myriad Convention Center. The move would give transferring riders indoor shelter to wait for buses. Currently, passengers are sheltered by only a roof.

Here's an inside tip on how the game of swaying public opinion is played: if you're a group advocating a position, provide information to obscure publications or small town officials who won't spend the time to see whether its accurate. They write editorials and stories, or pass resolutions, based on the information they were provided by the lobbyist, activist, what have you. That same advocate/activist/lobbyist then uses the resolution/story/editorial to argue their case with the public: "see here, this city council, this paper is saying what I'm saying ..."

Did Tom do this? I don't know. Notice he never wanted to answer questions from me. Folks, always question what you read and hear, and yes, that goes for what you get from me. Educate yourselves, do some digging, and be smart about what's going on.

thanks steve i wanted to post something similar but didn't have the background story to back it up.

Steve, after I read the op/ed by the powerful Piedmont Surrey with a Fringe on Top Paper, I was convinced that TOM ELMORE actually wrote it.

Hey Tom, here's something from a REAL news source that shows rail isn't what you thought it to be...

From: The Register

Research: Airliners can be more eco-friendly than trains
Flying cars bound to be greener than normal ones, surely

By Lewis Page
Posted in Environment, 8th June 2009 08:58 GMT

Research carried out by boffins in California appears to have seriously undermined a major piece of received wisdom regarding transport: namely, the belief that railways are more eco-friendly than airliners.

The cage-rattling analysis comes from profs at the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at UC Berkeley. Rather than merely considering the carbon emissions resulting from fuel burned, the researchers considered every ecological impact created by having a given means of transport. Carbon or other greenhouse-gas emissions resulting from manufacture of concrete and steel, generation of electricity, manufacture of rolling stock etc. were all accounted for with respect to railways: and in the case of aircraft, building of airports and other associated infrastructure was included along with manufacture of the planes and so on.

According to the Berkeley boffins, the added greenhouse burden of construction, manufacturing, supply chain etc. etc. adds 155 per cent to the impact of railways, compared to "tailpipe emissions" arising in use. For road vehicles the increase is 63 per cent. But for aircraft it's just 31 per cent - the low figure being partly because aircraft emit a lot of exhaust in service, and partly because they need relatively little infrastructure, materials and so on.

What this adds up to, according to the engineers, is that the highly energy-efficient light-rail system in Boston - where a lot of electricity is fossil generated - has the same environmental impact when half full as a medium-sized airliner with 38 per cent occupancy. The virtuous public transport system is actually more environmentally damaging per passenger mile than the fuel-guzzling jet, even at somewhat higher occupancy.

We here on the Reg flying-car desk are particularly bucked by this news, obviously, as it would seem to lend support to our hypothesis that flying cars could be greener than normal ones. Or anyway, greener than trains running half empty.

The Californian engineers' paper is published online (free) today, in the journal Environmental Research Letters. ®

They probably didn't even begin to take into account the carbon cost of traffic which would be inevitably held up by trains (thus forcing cars to emit more CO2).

Tulsa World: State tracks train plans

Tom, you never cease to amaze me.

http://newsok.com/track-talk-odot-di...adlines_widget

If we're going to change the subject, don't you think it's time for another thread?

I hate to be trying to do metro's job here, but 37 pages... if you're going to change the subject, new thread time.

I think that considering the reality that most of the tracks at Union Station are going to be gone by the time dirt starts to turn on high-speed rail, we really can't bemoan the fact that Union Station probably isn't an option anymore -- and that's OK. There are plenty of places to put tracks.

I think it'd make much more sense to put a high-sped rail hub at Will Rogers World Airport than anywhere else. Doing that, we wouldn't have to worry about integration of different modalities of transportation or any of that nonsense. You could hop off of your train and right into a bus or rental car. Problem solved.

As far as the editorial's content goes, it's not a very smartly written piece and Ridley is, either purposefully or accidentally a big fat hypocrite here. For one form of transportation to complain that another might be subsidized is just hilarious. Name me one (motorized) form of transportation which in some way isn't subsidized and I'll buy you a chicken dinner.

From the "Entertainment Section" of the state's largest newspaper:

http://newsok.com/oklahoma-city-fans...ad_story_title

Of course it's in the "Entertainment Section"...it's a story about a novelty...not a serious transportation option.

From the story...

" . . . traveling in the past." What an apt description.

Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing ever happened. Winston Churchill

Ah yes -- "traveling in the past." Like Nashville, St. Louis, Dallas, Austin, Houston, Denver, Little Rock, Salt Lake, Phoenix, Albuquerque, Seattle, Portland, Sacramento, San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Diego, etc., etc. are doing, as fast as they can.

Here in Oklahoma, perpetually "boom-bust," 46th in per capita income and fading, we "sure don't want none uh that stuff" -- even though we already have more of it lying on the ground than nearly any other state.

We're much too smart for that. After all, we have Columbia Journalism Review's worst newspaper in America here telling us we oughta tear up the center of our rail network and forget it. They wouldn't mislead us, would they?

Tell me again, now -- who's traveling in the past?

The Oklahoman was named the "worst" like 20 years ago.

The description ceased to be accurate some time ago.

From the look of things, you are. You keep repeating the same refrain over and over again, and making so little progress. In fact, I think you're moving backward. I was sympathetic and open-minded about the issue at the beginning, but you have managed to turn me off to it completely. Congratulations!

Midtowner: This morning's "Ridley and rail" editorial says you're absolutely wrong. Still the worst. Still utterly self serving -- and utterly self righteous.

Brad: I've fought this fight for more than fifteen years. Strangely, I don't recall stumbling over you at any juncture in this or any other battle. If those of us who are doing this work win, you and your children win, whether they choose to stay in Oklahoma or not. If you win, I guess -- not, apparently, that you're actually in the fight one way or another (although the apathetic have chosen their side by default) -- we all lose.

As ever, work is expensive and talk is cheap.

True, I'm always sorry to see preemptive self-alienation from efforts in which folks were never involved anyway, but I'll try not to be discouraged. In any case, best wishes wherever and whenever you finally decide to take a stand, if you ever do.