Tacoma's streetcar was funded by SoundTransit (our regional transit agency). SoundTransit does LRT in Seattle and regional bus in the Seattle Tacoma CSA. Seattle's streetcar was funded by the city of Seattle bonds (I think) as a seed project for South Lake Union/Vulcan (Paul Allen). I think Portland's streetcar was funded by their city bonds.

I agree with Spartan, let's not get too ahead of ourselves. We need an extensive system in the downtown districts - before we can start having spokes to here and there. Remember, this is streetcar - so you probably do not want to have any one spoke longer than 3 miles (because it would take way too long to have a streetcar going any further).

I think if we covered all of the downtown districts very well,

1) Sheridan E-W (Classen/Western to Lincoln) dual tracked
2) Walker or Hudson N-S (S 7th to 13th or so) single tracked
3) EK Gaylord/Broadway (S 7th to 13th) single tracked with dual portions
4) a deep deuce spur at 4th and Broadway/EK that runs up to Lincoln (and possibly into OHC)
5) a few single track connectors in the CBD area and maybe running on 4th

keep in mind, you can have a streetcar turn from one alignment to another, so it dont necessarily need to be a straight line and that's it (like a train or LRT). Streetcars can be quite versatile and I think that is how OKC should do it in the dense downtown CBD (plus opens up options for routes).

This should be phase 1. If we can't do OHC with our MAPS funds, maybe they could contribute $25M or so to have a circular run through there. (side note) I think it would be way cool if OU had a streetcar circular in place of that trolley, a real trolley line.

Plase 2+ could extend spokes up to Paseo/OCU/Asia District, Capitol campus, Capital Hill and Stockyard's City, and maybe into the Eastside a bit, and MAYBE Penn Square/Nichols Hills. That's as far as you'd want a streetcar to go, because it would move incredibly slow sharing right of way and ahving so many stops. If OKC got this extensive of a system, it would be the impetis for LRT to cover the rest of the city once we get density (of course, LRT has less stops but is faster - so justifies service to areas away from the inner core but still in OKC city limits).

Commuter rail is a different animal, since it is even less stops but runs on traditional rail corridors; we could actually do CR tomorrow. I envision the following routes:

EAST: Choctaw PnR-Tinker-MWC downtown-Del City PnR-DOWNTOWN
SOUTH: Purcell PnR-OU-Norman downtown-Crossroads PnR-DOWNTOWN
NORTH: Guthrie downtown-N. Edmond PnR-Edmond downtown (maybe)-S. Edmond PnR-N. 63rd TC-DOWNTOWN

Then there's the Heritage Train for the North East/Adventure District to DOWNTOWN and the West and South West alignments.

I honestly think we should probably go from streetcar straight to Commuter rail (or vice versa) and probably skip LRT for a while, because of the cost savings and the fact that OKC aint the densest city in the nation. .....

Exciting times - definitely!!!