Qualify failure.. and I'll say again, downtown Phoenix is just a huge failure all over. Downtown OKC is in an entirely different echelon.

Downtown sucks -> install rail to make it better -> downtown still sucks = failure

What about Salt Lake City? Their light rail system (TRAX), is working great for their city...OKC should invest in light rail rather than street car.

http://www.fta.dot.gov/TRO_8/TRO8_UTA_Trax-LR_2_rdax_300x451.jpg

The way OKC outshines Phoenix is in character... There are no really interesting commercial neighborhoods where you could stand there and recognize that you're in Phoenix.

I understand what you are saying and agree with you. However, Phoenix is unique in its concentration of modern architecture.

Not EVERYWHERE has to have history to it, sometimes being around buildings beautiful in design is a fun experience to itself. One can shop without guilt, while recognizing a building as a place of modern consumption and nothing else.

What about Salt Lake City? Their light rail system (TRAX), is working great for their city...OKC should invest in light rail rather than street car.

http://www.fta.dot.gov/TRO_8/TRO8_UTA_Trax-LR_2_rdax_300x451.jpg

Salt Lake City got lightrail for one reason - the 2002 Winter Olympics. Now having said that, it has worked well for SLC which is a testament to how much better rail is than buses. However, lightrail is not cheap. The two lightrail lines in SLC have 19.6 miles of track and cost $517 million in 2002 (adjusting for inflation - that is $613 million in 2009 dollars). Lightrail cost $10 million more per mile.

I'm not really sure what the advantage to light rail would be. We need commuter rail and some method of moving people around once they arrive at the hub. The streetcar suits that purpose very nicely and for less money.

In reality - the University line and the downtown zone in SLC is a streetcar. While many areas of suburban SLC have been begging for light-rail access, future expansion is going to be streetcars.

http://www.deseretnews.com/article/705363873/Mayor-Ralph-Becker-Streetcar-success-reflects-state-of-Salt-Lake-City.html

Downtown sucks -> install rail to make it better -> downtown still sucks = failure

Do you think they installed LRT in Phoenix to make their downtown better? To me I view their motives as more pertaining to real estate investment, and I had read several articles last year where it has attracted them almost a billion dollars in private investment. Now just like with LRT, I still doubt that a billion dollars in private investment is going to make Phoenix more urban, but it's a start.

The problem with Phoenix, that makes OKC so much superior, is that I don't think they talk about things like walkability, quality of life, livability, street walls, urbanism, well-planned downtowns, human scale, etc. In OKC that's what we talk about. That's what they talk about in places that are much more urban than OKC. We have shifted the paradigm to the urban and our development is beginning to match it as people come out of the woodwork with resources such as Richard McKowns, Grant Humphreys, Jeff Struble, Steve Mason, and so on...people who are committed to urban planning principles and making OKC successful.

And G. Walker, as for Salt Lake's LRT..and that we should try it..good luck with that. If somebody can find $1B for LRT in Central Oklahoma then I'm all ears. I don't think it can be done though, especially without precedent. Furthermore, what's wrong with streetcar? It is absolutely ideal for operating in a dense, downtown area, such as we have. We will have the enormous streetcar system we once had back when OKC's had the largest streetcar network in the nation. When that happens, LRT will be the obvious solution to bridge the gap between opposite ends of the network and to connect far away suburbs in other counties like Yukon, Moore, Norman, et al. The only fallback of streetcar is that it isn't very feasible to take it all the way from SW 44th/Western up to Nichols Hills. But a shorter 4-5 mile trip into downtown or somewhere on the way, why not?

Hick town? You seem like a smart guy Spartan who shouldn't have to resort to small jabs and slams to make your point. You might not like Stillwater and that is fine. It is not for everyone. However, there a lot of people who love Stillwater and think hicktown might not be the best way to describe it.

Let's be real, OSUfan. OSU is a great school that's been held back by its location. It should have been put in Tulsa.

I only even go there because someone suggested that the state needs to direct resources toward a college just for the sake of downtown OKC having one. The state doesn't really have resources for higher education in general, but we need a new downtown college, anyway. OU and OSU have been held back by a state government that doesn't really care about the educational value of its two flagship universities and would rather pander to the small town interests that control this state and must support all of these crappy branch campuses that we're inundated with.

Back in 1895 they should have put OU in the middle of downtown OKC, and OSU in the middle of downtown Tulsa. You'd have your state's comprehensive research institution in a Madison-like setting and your state's land grand institution in an Austin-like setting. But instead we have Norman and Stillwater for education, which aren't bad, but realistically they're small college towns of less consequence than Boulder or Lawrence. And I say that as someone who attended OU until transferring, and I had a great time and still consider myself an OU guy, I'm just occasionally critical of its planning, and don't even get me started on how great OSU's campus could be if they just pulled their heads out of T. Boone's arse.

They should have done that back in the 1800s, and now it's too late. OSU is too entrenched in Stillwater and OU is too entrenched in Norman. So they should just continue to build onto what their main campuses already are. Who knows, maybe someday Norman can be like Durham (although a nicer version) is to Raleigh and Stillwater can be like Lawrence is to Kansas.

Being in the middle of city is not always the best thing for a large university, near the city seems better. UT-Austin has had space constraints for a long time and has just has to pay a premium to get land near them or else locate many things far away from the "40 Acres" (main campus). They should have moved UT out to the Brackenridge Tract (1,000 acres, 500 acres donated by George Washington Brackenridge in 1909 plus another possible 500 acres from the Pease family) when they tried to but the business leaders in Austin at the time didn't want it moved "way out of town" so they convinced legislators to block the move. That "way out of town" piece of land sits on Lake Austin Blvd. just south of Tom Miller Dam, a little over a mile from where Whole Foods is located now.