Quote Originally Posted by Tier2City View Post
The concern I'm hearing is should what people have already voted on be changed?

Many things are needed to improve public transit overall and no one improvement will do it all. The streetcar is but one, albeit important, step in that direction that had and continues to have strong public support. What other steps can be taken in addition? These might include:

  • improved transit funding (Sunday bus service, extended bus service hours?) in the FY2014 budget;
  • allocation of MAPS 3 contingency funds;
  • Next GO Bond vote;
  • MAPS IV
  • Regional Transit District tax; amongst others.

There are many other additional sources of funding and additional approaches to consider to improve public transit in the near, medium and long term. Clearly, public awareness and support of public transit is the greatest it's ever been in this city and region for a long time. That's not going away and this shouldn't be a zero-sum game.
To answer your intital question - No. I think there would be overwhelming agreement with that.

The rest of your post is exactly why this is so frustrating. Streetcar advocates (like me) regard the streetcar as the first of hopefully many improvements in OKC's transit system. A vote of OKC citizens chose the streetcar project (along with 8 other projects of varying popularity) as our first step toward the goal of providing multiple moderns modes of transportation. To attempt to redirect the funds that are designated (despite any semantic games one might play with the language of the resolution and/or ballot) for that project would probably derail any future prospects for additional investments in OKC transit via the MAPS mechanism. Despite its flaws, MAPS is a proven method for funding large scale civic projects as long as the voters will and intent is not subrogated. Adherence to the unwritten "contract" between the voters and our elected officials has enabled a potentially flawed process to work quite well for the greater good. To disregard this would negatively impact the momentum OKC has generated over the last several years and that would be very disappointing to see.