Downtown corridor eyed for OKC mass transit options

by Brian Brus
The Journal Record
6/13/2007

OKLAHOMA CITY – The city’s Department of Transit Services has taken a big step toward the development of a light-rail or other mass transportation system by putting out a request for professional analysis of a downtown corridor, transportation administrator Rick Cain told the Oklahoma City Council on Tuesday.

Cain, who heads the Central Oklahoma Transportation and Parking Authority, also clarified later that interest in a multimillion-dollar project does not conflict with COTPA’s decision to cut the city’s bus routes this summer. The route reductions are due to overheating concerns, and are actually a testament to the public’s reliance on reliable mass transit, he said.

Cain’s request for $1 million more than his department received last year was approved Tuesday as part of the City Council’s unanimous vote to pass a $758 million budget for fiscal year 2007-2008. The budget will go into effect July 1 unless a protest is filed within the next two weeks.

About a year ago, COTPA produced a “fixed guideway” study that projected into 2030 the city’s most heavily used traffic corridors. About a dozen such corridors were identified and matched with likely modes of mass transportation, including variations on bus lines and rail-based vehicles.

Assuming that the city will, indeed, move ahead someday to construct a major transit system and that federal money will be involved, COTPA administrators last week started working on the years-long process necessary for securing those funds, Cain said. The authority chose to focus on the Downtown Circulator Corridor, which would be based in the central business district with branches to high-density areas including nearby housing districts, Bricktown and the state Capitol, and through the expected development just north of the Oklahoma River following the relocation of Interstate 40.

The transportation authority last week opened the bid process to hire an engineer to analyze the corridor and provide more specific numbers than earlier estimates, he said. Based on such narrowly defined criteria, a single, preferred vehicle for mass transit will be chosen and weighed for its viability. That choice should be made by September, he said.

“Clearly, there are a number of folks in town who are interested in some form of light-rail system,” he said. City leaders were surprised last month when results of a nonscientific pubic survey for possible MAPS3 tax issue goals revealed more than three times the support for mass transit than the second-most cited issue.

But Cain said early research suggests that the oft-cited train-like “light rail” system is likely to give way to “modern streetcars,” which are smaller, single vehicles that follow a constructed path in less space and that work well with tight corners.

“But now we’ve got to do the math on it and see if it is, in fact, the best choice or whether there are other alternatives that would make more sense,” he said.

That action might seem on its face to fly against COTPA’s decision to pull buses from nine of its routes. One route, which runs to Will Rogers World Airport, will be cut entirely, while the other affected routes will run fewer times each day.

But Cain said the issues are largely unrelated. The city’s buses last summer had several air conditioning shortfalls during 100-plus-degree days, “and whenever you have bus service in that kind of environment, it takes a beating. … We just had a lot of problems in keeping our AC systems up and also not having breaks in service,” he said.

The authority has increased its staffing and improved its maintenance management since then, he said. “But I was not completely happy as we approached this spring and going into summer that we were where we needed to be. … I did not want for our patrons experience the same problems we had last summer.”

So the route reductions are planned in part to ensure COTPA has sufficient backup buses if similar problems arise again, he said.

As for how the shortfall intersects with light rail, he said, “In several cities they’ve encountered a problem that when they introduce a rail or any kind of special transit service, people are concerned it’s on the back of bus services. … That’s clearly not the case.

“At this point in time, we’re a long way before we introduce any rail service, and to be able to do that, we’re going to have to figure out a way where we have some type of dedicated funding we can rely on … not only for rail operations but also our ongoing bus operations,” he said.

“In fact, if you do get into any kind of rail operation, you have to enhance your existing bus system to get people to the rail stations.”