Quote Originally Posted by Urban Pioneer View Post
Larry, we're not ready for a multi-county vote to impliment a multi-jurisdictional transit system, authority, and permanent funding source. It's that simple. If you want to volunteer some time, we'll send you to Moore and Yukon to help organize voters for transit. That's the type of campaign that it would take to see your wish above through.

I don't mean to be sarcastic, but wishing it so doesn't make it so. We got as much for transit as politically possible in Maps. If you could have swayed the Chamber for a smaller Convention Center, or lost some other project, we could gladly use another $150 million on more streetcar, hub, or built bus shelters. But what your describing doesn't fit into the MAPS program and it's structure.

It is propogating a misnomer just like Mr. White tried to do. He now seems to understand that we are working hard to establish THE precedent that will enable broad public support for implementation of the greater multi-city masterplan.
Urban is spot on. The reality of the matter is the only way we'll achieve a great comprehensive transit system, including bus, for the metropolitan area is through establishment of a regional transit authority, district and dedicated funding source, just like DART, Denver RTD or UTA. And the only way to garner the necessary public, political and business support for creating such a mechanism is through rail-based transit as the foundation, which unlike bus transit can gain the support of middle and middle-upper class voters who will use rail transit, as well as political and business interests who understand the economic development opportunities created by rail transit. But before we can get there, we must carefully educate and introduce to those whose support we'll need the value of rail-based transit, which has been gone from the Oklahoma City metropolitan area for more than 50 years. And that is without question the most valuable aspect of the modern streetcar project.