Bus Rapid Transit (BRT)

[Mott]

I dont understand what you are asking. Busses will load like normal on passenger side.

The NB Classen stop has the bike/sidewalk/multi-use lane on the east side of the bus platform (right-hand side when facing the NB direction). The bus platform is in the current right-most lane of three lanes. However, NB Classen will be generally reduced to three lanes until like 16th street with the right-most lane converted to bike and buffer.

The BRT stations north of 16th on Classen will be designed to allow for an additional 12' space behind the sidewalk to allow for future design of a bike lane or multi-use path.

Thanks for the clarification, didn’t realize there would be a bike lane on east side of the stop. It will a learning curve having only one lane northbound on Classen when the bus is stopped.

[Pete]

First shelter has been installed on the NE corner of 63rd & Meridian.

Image from the Rapid FB page:

[TheTravellers]

All bus stops in OKC should look like this.

[joshbayne]

They look petty good. Looks much like the ones in Denver.

[HOT ROD]

exactly, and tru BRT shelters should be longer/bigger.

[Mesta Parker]

Perhaps the shelter is sized to accommodate the number of riders projected to use BRT?

[Mississippi Blues]

Perhaps the shelter is sized to accommodate the number of riders projected to use BRT?

Possibly, but then it just goes back to the point that this isn’t in line with what BRT is typically thought to be, at least starting out. I’m sure if/when EMBARK needs to expand service as ridership increases, they will order larger capacity buses and build larger shelters.

[Mississippi Blues]

They look petty good. Looks much like the ones in Denver.

I’m not sure of the dimensions for the BRT shelters, but there are stops similar to this on busier routes in Oklahoma City. The elevated platform is the main difference between already existing stops and the new BRT stops. That and the dedicated passenger loading/unloading zones.

[HOT ROD]

BRTs have large/long shelters, to accommodate crowds. That's the difference between mass/rapid transit and local bus. An example is below:



I do agree with the platform being the main difference; but Putting in a "normal" shelter at that location doesn't indicate confidence in OKC being a mass transit city, IMO.

[krisb]

Really disappointed to see such basic infrastructure and branding compared to Spokane's new BRT. Spokane is 1/3 the size of OKC but has more than three times the daily bus ridership.

[Plutonic Panda]

OKC just has zero concept of what real transit is and how to build it. I don’t understand why it’s so hard to send a team of people to somewhere that builds good ridership or hire a consultant from Argentina or Columbia on how to build real BRT.

[Pete]

OKC just has zero concept of what real transit is and how to build it. I don’t understand why it’s so hard to send a team of people to somewhere that builds good ridership or hire a consultant from Argentina or Columbia on how to build real BRT.

It's a money issue, not a lack of knowledge or care.

We've had next to nothing for over 70 years. Try to be grateful for progress instead of expecting perfection.


If ridership is good on this first line, there will be more to come. If not, then don't blame the city for not spending more.

[Plutonic Panda]

It's a money issue, not a lack of knowledge or care.

We've had next to nothing for over 70 years. Try to be grateful for progress instead of expecting perfection.


If ridership is good on this first line, there will be more to come. If not, then don't blame the city for not spending more.

I don’t think it’s fair to say I should be grateful because I disagree with how comically bad this BRT line is. But to your point about it, not being lack of knowledge, I agree there because the city apparently knew this wasn’t anywhere close to being actual BRT so they re-branded it simply as rapid.

I’m not grateful, nor am I happy to see this project, and I only hate it a little bit less than the street car. I know I’m over simplifying things, but had the city spent the money on the street car or at least part of it on this to do it right and whatever would be left over on the rest of the bus system, it would be much better.

But I am very skeptical. The city truly cares about building real quality transit versus trying to build as much as they can, with what little money they have. I’d rather spend more on one quality project and have less transit lines, than have more transit lines that don’t function as well.

And you also comment about ridership being a determining factor as to whether or not they invest more but that directly ties into why it should’ve been done right the first time which has been proven in other cities that people will use alternative transit when it’s built right. So if the city builds a half assed, BRT line, and ridership is less than optimal then that is not a fair judgment call.

And really Pete, just for starters, how much more extra money would have been to repaint a lane of Classen red so people know it’s only a bus lane? And then they built bus pull outs, so car traffic flows while buses are picking up passengers. While this is good for the flow of automobile traffic, it also increases travel times due to the fact the bus will now have to wait until a break of traffic to re-enter the road.

Now with Northwest Expressway, I would be opposed to removing any car lanes. But I would like to see a center running BRT line which would cost a lot of money. However, the city could’ve done that in a later phase and just built the basic version removing a lane on Classen and not building bus pull outs. We’re having this weird jigg jagged route through the hospital complex by Hefner Parkway.

[Midtowner]

Now with Northwest Expressway, I would be opposed to removing any car lanes.

I'm generally for BRT and rapid transit, and you do have to start somewhere. I get it. But if they're really going to remove a lane of NW Expressway, it's going to be insanely bad. That used to be my commute and as it stands, traffic gets very backed up at peak times. Taking a lane away would be absurd.

[Just the facts]

I'm with you Panda. Build it correctly or don't build it all. Being happy for a poorly designed system versus nothing at all is what gave us the streetcar, and it is infinitely more difficult to sell the public on fixing or expanding a broken transit system. I even hate that they used the term BRT when they are implementing nothing more than a limited stop bus route.

This is another mass transit idea that is going set us back another 10 years.

[Plutonic Panda]

^^^ if this issue is truly about money then break the project up into phases. As annoyed as I get by phased approaches I’d rather have those than doing it all at once at the expense of lesser quality end product.

I would’ve been much happier if this project just was on Classen from downtown to NWE and done right with a future extension up NWE when the money can be found.

[soonerguru]

Really disappointed to see such basic infrastructure and branding compared to Spokane's new BRT. Spokane is 1/3 the size of OKC but has more than three times the daily bus ridership.

Not sure why this is surprising to you. Oklahoma is a state in which public transit is considered something for poor people only. Fortunately, our city is beginning to take major steps to change that thinking.

[BoulderSooner]

Really disappointed to see such basic infrastructure and branding compared to Spokane's new BRT. Spokane is 1/3 the size of OKC but has more than three times the daily bus ridership.

spokane's is actually BRT OKC's is not ..

and your pop numbers are misleading at best ... (more likely disingenuous)

spokane is basically 1/10 the size of OKC

and spokane has 3,300 a sq Mile OKC has 1,100 a sq mile .. 3 times the density ..

[Teo9969]

Having traveled and lived in places where public transit is a fact of life even for the upper middle class and above, I am becoming more and more convinced that effective transit is quite a ways off owing mainly to the way the city developed from 1930 to 1980 more so than how it has developed from 1980 to 2030...not that 1980 - 2010 helped at all, but OKC does not have really any major win route to create. An unbelievably well thought out, well publicized, and ludicrously well funded system is necessary for any shot of utilization.

And by ludicrously well funded, I mean Embark funding would need to balloon from ~$45M annually to ~$200M annually. Even that is no guarantee of success.

3 things KILL transit in this city.

1. Parking minimums. Forget investing in comprehensive transit until we do away with these requirements, minimum inside the Grand Loop and more realistically, inside the Kirkpatrick Turnpike loop. This is a double whammy that cuts density off at the knees and incentivizes owning/using a car.

2. Cost of living. Car Ownership/Driving is not cheap anywhere, but here is about as cheap as it gets and largely because #1 creates zero incentive for parking to be a real cost at play and because you don't lose hundreds of gallons of gas per year sitting in slow/stand still traffic.

3. You can get anywhere in the metro pretty quickly with a car. When we went back to Buenos Aires a few years ago, my Mom was hoping we would take some time to go see the daughter (and her husband) of one of my Mom's closest friends. They were located approximately 5 miles away from us and we genuinely were not sure until the last moments that we would actually be able to coordinate a meet up with them. 6 miles away and the stars had to align for us to see each other. While some of that owed to just pure scheduling, I cannot express enough how much of a nightmare it is to.coordinate the logistics on top of that.

Indeed, we ended up.making the meeting happen, but the best anecdote from that story comes as we departed. My wife and I had rented a car, and offered to take them back to their place a whole 3 miles away from our half way meeting point. They declined on account that it would take them ~25 minutes to get home using public transit rather than the 40-60 it would take of we drove them...3 miles.

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There's not a world where the most perfectly designed transit system is solving any real world problems for any significant percentage of the population of this metro area. Because of that, the quality of life increase is marginal at best.

EVEN STILL, I support BRT because it's the first move we have made in transit to bring any part of our system into the 21st century. It might be on life support, but that is genuinely better than dead. Right now, it can at least fine the occasional seat at the table. Otherwise, transit won't even be an afterthought and we will continue to allow crazy parking minimums alongside generally undense development. Sometime within the next 5 years, some resident downtown is going to take BRT to Oak, enjoy the night, and return on BRT and tell their friends what a great experience that was. THAT is what will begin to change the conversation.

[Cocaine]

The real issue is the location of any win route. Do you really see the city building a route on S 44th Steet? How about MLK? Or even a S. Walker route that branches off to OCCC. What would the reaction be if there was a 23rd street from MLK to say Portland. Or even a 10th street route from say OU Medical Center to OSU-OKC. The city is really only interested in what looks not serving routes that work. The city currently wont even make most routes with say 15 minute frequencies in peak times that's not even a big deal or anything. Embark isn't serious public transit and this isn't even comparing it to similar sized cities that do take public transit serious world wide. As long as leadership doesn't care and a significant amount of people in the city have the mindset of "No one lives over there" in regards to walkable areas that are underserved by transit. This will not change.

[Just the facts]

What problem is BRT trying to solve in OKC? Routes to the suburban fringe only encourage more sprawl. It is almost like the City has Dissociative Identity Disorder and it needs to decide which of its personalities it wants to be. It is still trying be everything to everyone by walking the line between sprawl and density. Just pick one and get on with it.

[LocoAko]

The real issue is the location of any win route. Do you really see the city building a route on S 44th Steet? How about MLK? Or even a S. Walker route that branches off to OCCC.

Yes, because they're literally in the planning stages for doing basically exactly what you described. (Source: https://twitter.com/shawn_dubs/statu...07559405244417)

[soonerguru]

What problem is BRT trying to solve in OKC? Routes to the suburban fringe only encourage more sprawl. It is almost like the City has Dissociative Identity Disorder and it needs to decide which of its personalities it wants to be. It is still trying be everything to everyone by walking the line between sprawl and density. Just pick one and get on with it.

NW Expressway at Meridian is hardly at the "suburban fringe." Geez. And, it is a commuter route by design, so I don't see the issue.

[David]

Yes, because they're literally in the planning stages for doing basically exactly what you described. (Source: https://twitter.com/shawn_dubs/statu...07559405244417)

This is very interesting, thank you for posting it.

[Plutonic Panda]

Public meetings will soon be held to determine alignments for additional “BRT” lines:

https://www.velocityokc.com/blog/eco...ack=super_blog