Study urges light rail metro transit
Champion needed to compete with other cities

By Ja’Rena Lunsford
Business Writer


Oklahoma City is behind some of its peers when it comes to a light rail transit system, but it's not too late for the metro area to get on board, according to a study revealed Wednesday.

The 12-month study detailing Oklahoma City's options in light rail travel was revealed during a Greater Oklahoma City Chamber meeting.

Tom Shelton, senior transportation planner for Carter & Burgess in Dallas, said city leaders must focus on transportation if they want to get Oklahoma City in motion.

"There is no reason why this can't happen," Shelton said.

Shelton said Oklahoma City's transit system is only able to meet one-third of the city's transportation needs, reason enough to push for a light rail system.

"Metro Transit is really challenged with providing enough service," he said.

The Fixed Guideway Transit Study examined a variety of transportation systems including commuter rail transit, streetcars and bus rapid transit, a light-rail on rubber tires.

Each system will require millions of dollars in capital and operating costs. A modern street car system would require $3.2 million in operating costs and $83.2 million in capital, according to the study.

Bus rapid transit systems require $35.7 million in operating costs and $40.2 million in capital.

Shelton said federal funding coupled with financing strategies such as a sales tax increases or city bonds would make any of the systems attainable.

He said many of the transit systems in other cities are financed from sales taxes.

Roy Williams, the chamber's president and chief executive officer, believes the public would support some sort of increase if it is for a cause they believe in and value.

"The public has shown that they will support good ideas if it meets those criteria," Williams said.

He said an expanded transit system is necessary for the city to meet its residents' needs and remain a player in the competitive standard-of-living market.

"If we are going to compete with our peer cities, we have to have a transit system," Williams said.

The study indicated Oklahoma City's population size can support a wide-spread transit system, Shelton said.

Cities with smaller populations have surpassed Oklahoma City in the race for the rail. Little Rock, Ark., with a population of about 185,000, and Kansas City, Mo., with about 445,000 people, both have light rail systems.

Oklahoma City's population is more than 530,000.

Shelton said the difference between those cities and Oklahoma City is that they had a champion, an individual who stepped up and kept the transit plan in focus and on schedule.He said finding a champion is Oklahoma City's next step.

If one is found soon, Oklahoma City could have a bus rapid transit system running downtown by 2013, Shelton said.

Surely if Little Rock can support a rail system OKC can.
CAT:The River Rail System (http://www.cat.org/rrail/)

A lot of work has been done in OKC over the past 10 years, but the reality is that all of that work was just so OKC could catch-up to other cities. And it isn't like other cities are just sitting around waiting to be passed in the quality of life area. Place like Little Rock are just as eager to grow as OKC is. OKC council members need to come up with MAPS 3.

Rail studies. Transit studies.

Public money -- up in smoke.

At a recent Democratic luncheon in Norman, Neal McCaleb, there to hold forth on "tribal sovereignty," was asked by one of the regulars why he ginned up the plan to destroy the OKC Union Station rail yard.

McCaleb answered that, back in the late 80s, he read a rail study that said rail wasn't viable in central Oklahoma.

"Read it?"

He apparently virtually wrote it -- to the degree that Parsons Brinkerhoff knew full well what they'd better tell Gov. Bellmon's Transportation Secretary if they wanted any more state contracts.

And the "Fixed Guideway Study?"

More of the same.

The producers of the study? COTPA -- one of whose most senior and influential executive level people is Steve Lalli, longtime "Executive Director" of the Oklahoma Transit Association. Of course, Mr. Lalli has other jobs, as well, one of which is serving as "Executive Director" of "Oklahoma Good Roads and Streets." Who are they? Neal McCaleb and his trucking and highway contracting pals and hangers on.

Then there was Renzi Stone's "Saxum Communications" -- which reportedly arranged the many small, oddly timed meetings around the metro instead of simply gathering central Oklahomans together so all could hear each others' concerns. What else was this outfit doing? Running the State Question 723 campaign to raise your fuel taxes for "Oklahomans for Safe Bridges and Roads." Who are they? Neal McCaleb, Bob Poe, Tom Love and their highway contractor pals.

And Carter Burgess Engineers -- the study's consultants and spokesmen?

Check your search engine: Carter Burgess Engineers; Intermodal Hubs, a transportation trifecta.

See at this site how Dallas and Denver are lauded for intelligent reuse of old Union Stations left with fractions of their yards by the time their cities woke up to the need. Transit officials from these cities have written and interviewed with OKC-area media as to how they would have killed to have had as complete an existing rail network and central station as OKC has.

But Carter Burgess was also competing for design work on the "New Crosstown" -- which its people knew would destroy Union Station. Could it have been that the road project, together with other potential road business, was far, far more lucrative than merely telling the truth about OKC Union Station?

Yep. Neal McCaleb -- now fronting his bunch under a new name -- "T.R.U.S.T." -- is now trying to cajole legislators into giving the road mafia an increasing percentage of state tag and registration fees, into which trucking pays only about 9% -- or float some bonds, or something -- anything to "give them their money NOW."

McCaleb is the father of the plan to destroy Union Station, perhaps wishing to guarantee no competition from quality transit in his lifetime. His pal Bob Poe, of Poe and Associates Engineers, got the contract to design the destruction of the rail yard and its replacement with a 10 lane expressway. Was it Poe's outfit that "didn't know the road couldn't be built in a ditch" until a few months ago -- or did that gaffe come from ODOT? And who was it who promised the project price would be -- yea, verily -- "$236 million."

Check this out for yourself, folks -- and then, think about it.

TOM ELMORE

Tom - It is pretty clear that if you want some kind of rail system in OKC you are going to have to forget about Union Station. Yes there are train tracks there but those rights-of-way go through some of the worst areas of OKC. You have to get people from where they live to where they work. Running trains through miles industrial areas and low income housing isn't going to work.

It is starting to be clear to me that to make a system work in OKC it is going to have to be mostly street cars that serve an area within a few miles radius of downtown. A second phase might include some type of lightrail to parts of OKC that are further out like NW Expw, NW 63rd, Memorial Rd, and the airport. I don't think we are going to see commuter rail to Edmond and Norman anytime soon.

Kerry --

With respect, I'd observe that you're thinking too small.

Are the neighborhoods around Westwood / Exchange "blighted?" Or the area around the Stockyards? Or May at 29th? Or Lillard Park? Wheatland? A lot of people live there, and the locations are at least as desirable for residential renewal as much of the "nicer" urban and suburban areas.

The neighborhoods of the near NE -- on the way to the Zoo? Poised for a comeback. And there's the new "Rose Rock development, literally "on" the COTPA / ORM rail line.

What other "worst areas" are you talking about? Have you walked or driven these areas? Have you seen the life there?

Was Bricktown a "worst area" when it was full of empty warehouses?

The only arterial direction not directly served by existing rail lines today is the NW, out 39th or NWX. There were once a lot of Rock Island delivery leads up there -- but in its "wisdom" the city and others destroyed them.

A regional, multimodal system is well within reach for central Oklahoma -- but it's not going to arrive on the "intellect" or "vision" of people like Mick Cornett.

Among the most crashingly telling things I've read in recent months indicating the utter dearth of leadership here was Steve Lackmeyer's story beating the rah rah drum for Kathy O'Connor's "Core to Shore property hunt." Lackmeyer proudly noted the Asst. City Manager had been "tasked" -- by persons unnamed -- to "make sure whatever develops in Core to Shore doesn't compete with Bricktown or the CBD."

I called her about this. She said it was accurate. I asked why it's appropriate for a public employ using public resources to be using her time and energies to protect certain businesses from competition.

Competition is what makes the American system work. Lack of competition -- and the uncompetitive business it breeds -- is one of the key reasons Oklahoma is "45th in per capita income" -- and fading.

It really bugged the Assistant City Manager to be "called out" on this. After all -- "protecting the big shots" has been what city and other government is all about in Oklahoma since the beginning. How dare I act like it's my job as a citizen to demand better!

Traditionally, constitutionally, the job of government in this country has been to establish access -- leaving it to competition in the marketplace to sort out the rest. The "MAPS mentality," of course, doesn't work that way.

Would Dallas, Denver, Sacramento or Salt Lake trade the effect of their new rail transit systems for all the "MAPS" programs you could assemble?

And why do the downtown powers want Union Station gone?

Perhaps because their auto dealer and related business buddies think "it's better to rule in hell than serve in heaven." After all -- this is "their state," not anybody elses. Right?

Again -- I quote Justice Robert H. Jackson: "It is not the function of our government to keep the citizen from falling into error; it is the function of the citizen to keep the government from falling into error."

I would urge you -- look at the way transit redevelopment has really worked over the last 25 years. Look at the lessons learned in Dallas, Denver, Salt Lake, Albuquerque, Portland, Sacramento, Houston (home of the -- aaargh! -- "Katy Freeway...."), St. Louis, Little Rock, Nashville -- and on and on.

These people have a lot to teach us -- but when I brought some of them in to speak at a Citizens League transit forum out at Metro Tech back in 1999, Drew Dugan, instrument of the OKC Chamber -- who turned out to be the "moderator," refused to allow them to make their presentations. (Long story. Glad to talk further about it, if you wish.)

As reinforced by recent observations noted elsewhere in this forum, Cornett and associates and their puppeteers appear to believe downtown's fortunes will somehow be raised by somehow cutting the area off from the suburbs and the rest of the state. It is a desperately blind and self-destructive idea (although all-too-typical of what has passed for "leadership" in this state in recent years).

Will we let them trade "a quick buck, today" for our children and grandchildrens' tomorrows (and our own, for that matter)?

TOM ELMORE

Tom - It is pretty clear that if you want some kind of rail system in OKC you are going to have to forget about Union Station. Yes there are train tracks there but those rights-of-way go through some of the worst areas of OKC. You have to get people from where they live to where they work. Running trains through miles industrial areas and low income housing isn't going to work.

It is starting to be clear to me that to make a system work in OKC it is going to have to be mostly street cars that serve an area within a few miles radius of downtown. A second phase might include some type of lightrail to parts of OKC that are further out like NW Expw, NW 63rd, Memorial Rd, and the airport. I don't think we are going to see commuter rail to Edmond and Norman anytime soon.

good post ... 100% agree ..

tom not everything is a giant anti rail evil plan ..

and rail is not the end all great option of the world ..

I believe, if OKC proper were to announce an interest in light rail, and told surrounding metro area cities that if they wished to participate or include a line to their area, they would have to foot the bill and part operating cost. Now, how they choose to pay for it, (sales tax increase, bond issues), is up to them.

I really like the plans for the new stretch of I-40, the blvd and core-to-shore and would not be in favor of scrapping that to save those east-west tracks.

I also don't believe that the current stretch of I-40 could be widened and modernized for only 50 million dollars.

These decisions have already been made and It doesn't advance anything to keep beating the same dead horse.

I do believe that the beginning stages of modern mass transit should be addressed as part of MAPS 3 but it needs to make sense. Empty trains going places no one wants to go is not the answer.

We need to not do anything about anything and then have Grover Norquist come to OKC and give us all a big hug.

Steve Hunt! How the hell are ya?