Streetcar

[OKC Guy]

We absolutely can reign is sprawl and become a decent city. It would just take a fraction of the effort it took to create the sprawling mess. I do not believe in throwing good money after bad. Just because OKC sprawls doesn't mean the city has to go broke making it easier to sprawl even more. Just because it has been the norm doesn't mean we cant learn from our mistakes.

Cheap land and cheap development makes a cheap city.

So you would prevent Paycom from building HQ in far NW OKC and its 3,000 jobs? We are already sprawled out and need to learn to coexist. I love OKC and all its offerings. If I wanted a urban city I’d go to one already that way. The fact we are both city and country is what makes OKC great. You have choices of lifestyle yet are still each vested as a city. I actually support every MAPS project we did except SC so its still a great place to live and work. Seeing places like Chisolm Creek sprout up outside of downtown is great too. A person now has choices! It does not make Bricktown bad it enhances choices for people to use.

My view now is we did remake our city with all the MAPS but are now at a key point. We don’t need to be like every other city, so I think we need to move forward fiscally smartly. Even with no more MAPS we will have hefty bills to pay to upkeep what we built. I think we need to scale down the MAPS timeline and have it as a 2 year vote and less projects per 2 year cycle. This gives us flexibility to adapt quickly to changing conditions. If we enter a recession we don’t want to be staring at 10 years worth of MAPS taxes. It would allow us to more quickly adjust projects/votes based on more near term needs. SC was approved in 2009, 10 years ago! At that time our core was lots different than now. So by making these shorter term we can adjust much faster to needs. Once we vote for MAPS its locked in for 8-10 years!

Anyways, just my thoughts. I really do like our city and am proud to tell others where I live. I don’t want to be Dallas or any other city I want to be OKC. When people look at vacations they want different. We are different and should embrace it. The SC will be great as a tourist item.

[hoya]

You're all wrong.

OKC is one of the most sprawling cities in the country. But that doesn't mean that we have to keep doing it that way. It's not a contest to see who can sprawl the most. We need to focus on rebuilding the core of our city. That doesn't mean we should just focus on downtown, but it does mean we need to stop encouraging people from building out on like NW 150th and Morgan Rd.

America fell in love with cars and built accordingly. But now we're seeing costs that come from a style of development that no one in the history of the universe had ever tried before. It turns out sprawl has a lot of downside that nobody knew before. OKC embraced sprawl like basically no one else, and right now there are no options other than that. We need a comprehensive growth plan for the next 50 years. It needs to limit any additional sprawl as much as possible, it needs to promote redevelopment of our inner city, and it needs to provide transportation for rich and poor alike.

As I see it, the streetcar should be a tourist/visitor/entertainment circulator and development promoter. Basically we run the streetcar to places where we want to encourage high density development, to places where we want visitors and guests to be able to easily visit, and service a handful of neighborhoods that happen to be in between those places. It's the showpiece. Run it up to the Capitol, run it over to OCU, have a spur that runs up to Penn Square Mall and Chesapeake. Have another that goes down to Capitol Hill, Wheeler District, and then runs through the Stockyards area to terminate at Will Rogers. Visitors to OKC should be able to take the grand tour by getting on the streetcar. Hit all the high points.

A better bus system will service poor people and outlying areas. There's no point in running the streetcar to NE 36th and Lottie, or all the way out past MacArthur. Let the buses handle those areas. Those people need public transit, but these are not really the areas we want to highlight.

Bike lanes, sidewalks, and jogging trails are important, and they're relatively cheap. I don't care if you're a fatass sitting at your keyboard saying "what a waste", we build things like that in the hopes that someday you'll lose weight (or eventually you'll be replaced by somebody who will use it). We need connections throughout the whole city.

A regional transit system is also important. It's basically mandatory for a city our size. We're a definite outlier by not having it. Some people will say "great, we didn't fall into that trap!" Those people are wrong. When you are setting the world on fire by being the greatest and most innovative, you can afford to buck the trends. When you are fighting to get noticed and rise above mediocre, you don't mouth off about how you're so much wiser than everyone else by not partaking in this latest "fad".

[Laramie]

Let's see how well the streetcar operates once the convention center complex is finished and many of the roads like Oklahoma City Boulevard becomes operational.

Noticed that between 12 noon & 1 p.m., it appears (sight from my vehicle) to be down times for the streetcar ridership. Once we get past all the major street construction; MAPS V will be a good time to evaluate streetcar expansion.

[d-usa]

The issue is that sprawl is a part of being such a huge city, and the people living 50 feet from the city limits have the same needs and rights to city services as the people living in downtown OKC. Both groups are citizens of OKC, and both groups are living inside the same city limits.

[Plutonic Panda]

Streetcars don't cause the same kind of sprawl as automobiles. And the "sprawl" they do cause, tends to still be walkable, dense, and more sustainable.

They cause sprawl. So now if we’re going to change the argument that sprawl is bad to only a certain kind of sprawl is bad then so be it. That isn’t the narrative that is often pushed by pro urbanism advocates however and certainly not COGs and MTAs which are grappling with extreme infrastructure costs all around.

[Plutonic Panda]

Why is Citylab a joke? The articles I posted seem to be accurate and valid. I never said anything about the conspiracy you reference, and the articles I posted say that the streetcar's demise is *not* a giant conspiracy by GM and the government, so you actually agree with Citylab, even though you think it's a joke.

Citylab is a joke because just about all of their content is “streetcars, bike lanes, and road diets along with the sprawl repair manual will fix everything.” Same thing with Streetsblog and often Curbed(though I like curbed a bit). They spin numbers to suit their agenda much like constantly pushing the induced demand fallacy at every change they get.

[Plutonic Panda]

I will agree with buses. We should have a top notched bus system that people can be proud of and want to ride.

Things could change regarding sprawl. We don't know how economic conditions will look 15,30,45 years into the future. Personal automobile hasn't been around that long in human history and most people in the world can't afford to enjoy this benefit. Not to get too political, but one thing Democrats and Republicans seem to indirectly agree on is that standard of living is slowly going to crap. Hopefully, both sides are wrong on this.

Mode share even in Europe is switching to cars in many cases, IIRC. That is certainly true in BRIC counties. The world is moving out of poverty. The rich might be getting richer but so are the poor. The poor aren’t getting poorer.

[Plutonic Panda]

He doesn't like these types of publications because they are for the most part anti-sprawl, anti -highway, pro mass transit publications.

Correct. There is also a way to advocate for mass transit without alienating a large potential pool of riders as well.

[Plutonic Panda]

Yeah, been tired of his single-lane (well, eighteen-lane) mind for a while, need to push back sometimes...

PluPan, did you even read the articles?

Did you read my reply? I said I read all of those articles long before you posted them here. I read Citylab and Streetsblog almost daily despite my disdain for them. That must be my single lane mind trying to get both sides of the picture.

[Zorba]

You make a good point and I’ve never been a fan of that logic which I agree many people possess of excepting public transit to pay for itself. Me being pro freeway, pro sprawl, etc. I’ll almost always get those who agree with me and respond to my comments saying something like that which I’ll always call them out on. But at the same time many transit advocates will attempt to spin that argument to support rail lines and the like claiming freeways are to expensive to build and don’t pay for themselves while a billion dollars a mile is slowly becoming the norm for many heavy rail projects in the city with light rail inevitably headed in the same direction.

We do have an issue runaway cost in this country, and a lot of it is from companies learning how to game the system to their benefit.

But there is also the issue that as density increases, cost of infrastructure also increases for many valid reasons. But as density increases, the usage also increases, so cost per person-mile doesn't necessarily also increase.

I'm not against road development, but we as a country need a much more balanced approach, and it is most cost effective to do it before its needed than 20 years after its needed.

[Zorba]

If you build streetcar-like stops for the busses on key corridors, and pass ordinances either limiting sprawl, or encouraging density along transit routes, I'd be inclined to agree. However, as it stands now, the streetcar is an excellent way for someone like my mom to try public transit and dig it. If we are to make it as a world class city we have to step up our game in providing alternate modes of transport besides the automobile so that all people feel comfortable and normal using something other than a car.

I agree we need to up our game, and the stops are really nice. But there are a lot of issues with surface rail and I really don't see that many benefits of it over a bus or trolley running the same route, except it seems "cooler" and "funner." Which, maybe that is what you need to get people to start accepting PT here.

I'm not against the SC I think it add something to downtown. I just don't really think it is the right PT system to expand.

[HangryHippo]

The issue is that sprawl is a part of being such a huge city, and the people living 50 feet from the city limits have the same needs and rights to city services as the people living in downtown OKC. Both groups are citizens of OKC, and both groups are living inside the same city limits.

I disagree. You just can't expect OKC to run services over all 600+ sq miles. The costs are exorbitant and completely unsustainable. We've got to get serious about stopping new sprawl.

[David]

I know Mayor Holt has talked about the city size issues in the past on his twitter account.

There was a thread where he talked about it I think earlier this year but I couldn't find it just now when looking, but this one about city streets maintenance touches on the problem.

The reason we as a city struggle with streets is the result of a simple formula. 1) We have one of the largest cities by land mass in the US (620+ square miles). Compare that to Boston, which has almost the exact same population but across only 90 square miles).

That disparity in land mass between OKC and other cities means each citizen of OKC bears a greater burden to somehow fund through their tax dollars more lane miles than their fellow citizens in other cities.

[d-usa]

I disagree. You just can't expect OKC to run services over all 600+ sq miles. The costs are exorbitant and completely unsustainable. We've got to get serious about stopping new sprawl.

Then don’t be a 600+ sq mile city. There is always an option to de-anex if we don’t want to provide city services to areas of the city. But OKC wants the tax base, so they wouldn’t go that route. Which means that we will always be a sprawling city and need to live with that.

It’s the other side of the same coin that makes it unreasonable for people living within the same city limits complaining when the city catches up with their rural country neighborhood

[PaddyShack]

Pete, can we have a Street Car or Public transit thread that only contains the updates about the system itself, and leave all of the debating to its own thread?

[David]

Then don’t be a 600+ sq mile city. There is always an option to de-anex if we don’t want to provide city services to areas of the city. But OKC wants the tax base, so they wouldn’t go that route. Which means that we will always be a sprawling city and need to live with that.

This would be a different question if we could have property tax fund city services, but since we are limited to sales tax for that it's a known problem that far out areas don't necessarily pay for themselves. We're left in a situation where we just have to hope the people living out there drive into the city to spend their money as opposed to in some other sales tax collection area.

IMO what we really should do is aggressively deannex and let everyone who wants the rural life to have the full experience of it, but politically that would never fly.

[HOT ROD]

Im not buying this continual argument that OKC is so spread out and blah blah. Most of the urbanized built-up area of OKC is quite compact actually running N-S. The city limits has a lot of rural and watershed but NOBODY lives there.

So why would there EVER be a conversation about running a train or bus to a rural area? It is for this reason I am a huge advocate for OKC to deannex the entire NE and SE side east of Bryant/Sooner Road keeping Stanley Draper and deannex everything S and W of Mustang. This is 200 square miles of rather 'useless' land that just skews OKC into a sprawl argument when there really isn't one.

OKC should go on a DIET, trim the rural!

[HOT ROD]

I just am not understanding how there's a tax base coming from 200 square miles of rural and watershed areas? what tax base?

trim that and OKC still receives the same tax base, has room for growth, and can now focus its resources on 400 square miles which makes the city much more efficient. Those 200 square miles of rural will NEVER be developed, I'm not sure why they're part of 'the city' to begin with.

[d-usa]

The tax base is convenience stores, dollar stores, small businesses, every single cell phone getting service out there, every Amazon delivery, contractors providing physical services, and so on and so forth.

Nobody is arguing that they need a street car, but they do get services and are part of the sprawl and the city isn’t going to let them go.

I’m sure people said the same thing about the cow pastures that Mercy decided to build a hospital on back in the day. The whole Memorial corridor was nothing but farm land that ended up getting developed.

[Plutonic Panda]

Pete, can we have a Street Car or Public transit thread that only contains the updates about the system itself, and leave all of the debating to its own thread?

Kind of like how I wanted a thread dedicated to construction updates to the boulevard yet it was constantly filled with the typical “i hate this project” “It won’t make people walk” “it’s bad urban design” over and over. Then when I asked this I was told it’s a relevant discussion.

LOL! I feel you though. I won’t respond to anymore off topic posts here.

[Ross MacLochness]

Sitting at cultivar tonight. Every streetcar I've seen pass by, probably seven or eight, has been absolutely packed with people. Seems to be popular and working That is all.

[Plutonic Panda]

I’d like to make this clear if I may. As much as I think the streetcar was a waste I believe now we are invested we should expand it and I am happy to see any project succeeding.

[d-usa]

Went downtown for the Myriad Gardens Children’s Festival today. Parked at Bass Pro and got the day tickets and rode to the gardens from the East Bricktown stop, then to Midtown for lunch at Fasslers Hall before heading back to Bass Pro. The kids liked riding it as a novelty and it was pretty full with folks who are in town for the National Beta Convention.

[Dob Hooligan]

Rode the streetcar for the first time today. Wasn’t nuts to butts, but very close. Neat experience, appeared kids riding loved it. Increasing in use and popularity. Cool toy. Paid for.

[Anonymous.]

So how come when I press the blue button indicating I want to get off on the next stop, sometimes the driver stops and opens the doors for me. Other times I have to not only press the blue button, but also press the door open button??? Is this just operator error? Like a training issue?

It doesn't make sense to have the door open button at all. The blue button is the indicator and if people are waiting at the stop, obviously it is time to open the doors. What am I missing here?