Downtown Trolleys

[dismayed]

I was looking at the transit website, gometro.org, just today after reading several downtown condo projects boast that they have a trolley stop in front of their location.

I noticed that the downtown Red line only goes until 2p.m., and the downtown Blue line only runs until 11 p.m. on the weekends. I'm thinking at some point this needs to be extended much later on the weekends if we are finally going to start having some people living in the downtown area.

Anyone know if the city council realizes this yet?

[Midtowner]

The red line is solely to facilitate the lunch rush around downtown -- to bring downtown workers in and out of Bricktown. The Blue Line is okay, but terribly undependable. It's supposed to run every 20 minutes.... B.S. to that. I live about a block away from a trolley stop. If it were the least bit dependable, I'd use it a lot. Instead, I just opt to hoof it to Bricktown from home.

-- oh.. and watch those colors. There's an orange line as well. Runs to Meridian. I got on that stupid thing after a LOT of beer on St. Paddy's day a couple years back.

It was a nice 1 hour detour. I got off over by the bus station... not in the best part of town. I'm going to pay closer attention to those flags in the future.

[cindyl57]

The Blue Line is okay, but terribly undependable. It's supposed to run every 20 minutes.... B.S. to that. I live about a block away from a trolley stop

I rode on it last week when I attended the Martina Mcbride Concert.I parked close to the OKC Arts Museum...
I think that they should either add a trolley..or make the time more believable.We were picked up at the Ford Center...And we got caught in all the traffic...There was a ball game at the Park and everyone letting out of the concert... IT took about 45 minutes to get to my stop....

But when I go to Bricktown..I always park away and then ride the trolley...It is cheaper and I don't have to mess with the traffic...
Cindy

[Mike]

many years ago, a man had a plan for people to park at the fairgrounds and ride to work or to downtown and it failed. There i still plenty of parking in that area and it might be somethign to think about as an extension of the trolley associated with free parking.

[Luke]

I had a thought about this. With all this talk of a city funded public transportation system (which is fine), why doesn't a private business start some sort of a shuttle service between certain locations.

Maybe shuttles every 20 minutes from the various malls to downtown and/or from mall to mall. A partnership could be made with certain businesses that requested it too. For example, a shuttle could go from Tinker, say, to various locations around MWC or DC... Or something like that... I dunno... just a thought!

[metro]

I do know certain businesses in the metro operate their own shuttle service. Hertz offers a shuttle service from NW 39th to their Expressway locations.

[Luke]

I don't live too terribly far from Crossroads Mall. What I was thinking, it would be a gas saver to drive and park there and then get on the bus that goes to Penn Square or Quail Springs or wherever...

[okclee]

I don't live too terribly far from Crossroads Mall. What I was thinking, it would be a gas saver to drive and park there and then get on the bus that goes to Penn Square or Quail Springs or wherever...

Leaving your car parked at Crossroads Mall??, Good luck on your car still being there when you get back.

I had my Chevy Silverado stolen from Crossroads Mall during the day, the police found it a few days later stripped down and all the windows broken out. I had an alarm too.

[Luke]

Any Park and Ride shuttle service would most likely have security in the section of the parking lot that they lease.

[okclee]

^^ True, but Crossroads Mall has parking lot security too. The police informed me that the cameras were not properly working at that time, go figure.

[HOT ROD]

guys, I think in order for park n rides to be successful, they need to be a bit further out and advertised!!!!

The fairgrounds is too far in, you might as well keep driving the 5 miles to downtown rather than park, wait on the bus/shuttle, then be several minutes later than if you had just drove there.

I think Park N Rides should be at the suburbs for now in order to make a difference, when the inner city becomes more populated then we could start talking about having them at places in like the fairgrounds.

Whatever the case, this needs to be advertised for a while so people can even become aware of it. I mean, OKC is a major CAR city and it wont change just because we're now a 1.3M metro - we got to get the word out and have reliable schedules and reasonable park n ride locations.

I think a very good way to get this going is by having bus shuttles during major downtown events. .... But it has to be reliable. It has to be convenient. and for a little while, it has to be advertised (until it catches on, which may take a year or two).