A Broken Ride?
The Oklahoma City Council will meet with trustees of the Central Oklahoma Transportation and Parking Authority Tuesday. And a lot of folks downtown will be watching and listening.
They include:
- The Bricktown Association, which is asking that the Oklahoma Spirit Trolleys actually be a part of the solution to the district’s parking challenges.
- Urban Neighbors, the downtown residents association which feels the trolleys are not set up to encourage people to leave their cars at their downtown abodes.
As I’ve mentioned before, the Oklahoma Spirit trolleys have been quietly and consistently demoted as an afterthought by COTPA, even as it presumed that its failure to adequately run a a downtown circulator didn’t preclude it from attempting a river boat transit service that duplicated a rarely-used trolley link between downtown and the I-40/Meridian Avenue hotel corridor.
The hours were cut. The routes were cut. Wait times were extended. Even though COTPA officials were asked early on about providing signage outside the trolleys to better inform people about stops on a trolley’s route, they made no effort to do so (such signs are used on similar trolleys with great success in San Antonio).
The names of the people involved in this effort a decade ago are the same names making decisions today. Rick Cain. Larry Hopper. The only one no longer in the mix is former director Randy Hume, who resigned following a budgeting error that cost the city a couple million or so from the feds.
So, what should be done to address the concerns of the Bricktown Association and Urban Neighbors?
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Comments
Empty rails from the entrance to Tinker Air Force Base to Bricktown await a light rail train system. No too many years ago the interurban could take you to and from El Reno, Guthrie, Edmond, Britton, and Norman. Very few things are more exciting than keeping some of your money in your pocket, your car in your garage, while your miles of wear are on a vehicle You don’t have to feed. I was very surprised to learn that people in some large cities don’t own cars or know how to drive one.
Easy way to get better. Get rid of Cain who is a weakling. Get someone with some vision, brains, and excitement. A rare commodity in the less than mundane world of transit. Not trying is worse than not doing.
For some reason I think OKC is soured toward the lame rubber-tire trolleys. Best just throw in the tower and try something better, more exciting. For some reason the Spirit Trolleys never coincided in people’s mind with OKC’s resurgence. OKC should try a different kind of mass transit that people would be more apt to view as a major asset in OKC’s resurgence. There would be more public excitement around such mass transit.