….but we have “enough population density” to carry ODOT’s $40+ billion “unfunded highway maintenance requirement” around on our shoulders — don’t we? We have enough “population density” to afford to pay to destroy the last, best urban rail center in the West, just as the obvious need for it is rising to an inescapable pitch — and then “pay again” to build something much, much less somewhere else.

Remember with me that 19th Century US railroads were built into wilderness. NO “population density.” Our great, great grandfathers were smart enough (“duh…”) to recognize that population, commerce and development follow efficient lines of transportation. That’s not only how the nation was built — but how modern Oklahoma and Oklahoma City were built. The “new transit cities” of the West have now proven, unequivocally, that their new rail transit lines, though much harder to superimpose on longstanding development, still produce the same dynamism.

This is a message and a truth that THE OKLAHOMAN, together with the OKC Chamber of commerce and its minions have carefully blocked.

But think about it: Would there BE a “DAILY OKLAHOMAN” today if not for automobile advertising revenue? And how much of what-passes-for-an-economy here is directly tied to the enslavement of the state’s population to the automobile. (“Enslavement” too strident a word? As my grandmother always said, “Son, you’re a slave to anything you can’t do without…..”)

Oklahoma City, with its 80-year-old, but recently-destroyed wealth of rail corridors and connections, nearly all created before current urban density arose, was thus characterized by lines either straight-as-a-rifle-shot over the prairie — or following river ingress/egress to the urban center. OKC should have been in the vanguard of the Western rail transit renaissance through simple and economical conversion of these existing assets. But what passes for leadership here deliberately, methodically and calculatedly obstructed what should-have-been. Why? Because they sell cars. They sell asphalt. They run truck lines. They make their money tearing-up and rebuilding concrete roads. And they “sprawl-develop” out into the irreplaceable, airable, near-urban agricultural country, but only because easily-led Oklahoma taxpayers blindly and persistently deficit-finance all support required to establish urban-style neighborhoods there, while allowing the historic urban core to rot and decay.

And note with me that the big shots brook no commentary on key aspects of what they’ve done:

http://newsok.com/article/3538569#disqus_thread

Where’s the comment thread?

Folks, this is the work of “leadership” that has absolutely no clue what a “transit hub” is. If it had possessed such a clue, it could not have denied the near-perfection of OKC Union Station’s yard, now destroyed as if it meant nothing.

It’s the work of people who hire outfits like Jacobs Engineering (Carter-Burgess Engineering’s new name) — and then pay them with the public’s money only on the condition hold the truth about what a real transit hub is hostage. That’s precisely what they did in the laughable “Fixed Guideway Study” — and they’re clearly doing it again right now.

The old Katy freight yard that lay for many years along the south side of Reno in what is now called “Bricktown” (but will likely more accurately have to be called “tilt-up town” in the near future) might have made an acceptable transit hub — but the big Katy freight house “mysteriously burned to the ground” late one night (soon after the old Central Oklahoma Railfan Club started talking about purchasing the facility to become the Oklahoma Railway Museum) and the miles of rail comprising the yard preemptively trashed. (That rail could have been relaid for downtown trolleys.) Now they claim they “really believe” they can wedge something even vaguely resembling a “transit hub” into “Bricktown?”

Is that what the destruction of OKC Union Station’s magnificent, virtually-ready-made potential rail hub was really all about? This is their substitute for that 8-block-long, 12-track-wide yard and its 55,000 square-foot terminal building and spectacular arterial street underpasses?

It would be truly unbelievable if this sort of penny-ante nonsense was not so completely characteristic of “leadership” in Oklahoma City.

If the public wants better — it’s going to have to “insist.”

Serious legal and professional repercussions should be visited on ODOT’s Gary Ridley, David Streb and John Bowman — as well as on the real father of this mess, Neal A. McCaleb, now seen nightly on 4, 5 and 9 shilling for more influence for the unaccountable Chickasaw Tribe. When McCaleb tells us “we’ve built our economy on oil and the internal combustion engine and that’s not going to change….,” he’s offering real insight as to his own, smug, covert motivations for the destruction of longstanding state rail treasures. McCaleb waged war on the state’s railway system during his appointed tenures in state administrations — and the disciples he left in charge at ODOT have now very nearly liquidated the state’s rail holdings.

The gross, deliberate crime committed in the destruction of OKC Union Station’s rail center will not be fully apparent to the public until ODOT’s “New Crosstown” is fully open. That, I believe, will clearly demonstrate no improvement in roadway traffic nearly sufficient to offset the astounding loss of our rail center and diminution of the utility of the surrounding surface street network.

The first key abdication of responsibility in the loss of OKC Union Station’s yard and underpasses, however, came at the hands of the State Historic Preservation Office — which has now quite clearly become mainly a facilitator of the destruction of its charges, apparently in exchange for favor of one kind or another at the hands of those who “benefit” in the near term. Those at the top of this agency should be put out of public service, period.

Among the lessons those of us who’ve fought the battle for Union Station have inescapably confronted was that there’s no effort at improvement in Oklahoma life, no expense of public energy, no careful, rational argument that the special interest agents now infesting our public agencies city councils to college boards of regents to the governor’s office cannot frustrate. They have been carefully positioned for precisely that purpose, such that significant improvement in Oklahoma’s public and material life is simply impossible without the excision of the embarrasingly-characteristic “government/patronage culture” from our public institutions.

Dismissing this reality and the clear demands of citizen responsibility by invoking empty shibboleths like “that train has left the station” amounts to self-sabotage.

In short, ODOT and its enablers must — must — be brought to account for these recent high crimes if we expect any improvement in the state’s transportation and general economy.

As to my sad reflection that Oklahoma City richly deserves the trouble it has now bought and paid for in “the New Crosstown” and the destruction of OKCUS (well, actually, it “courageously sent the bill to its unborn offspring…”) — nobody worked harder than my collegues, my family and I to prevent this fate. We didn’t just “wish” for better things for Central Oklahoma; we paid heavily in pursuit of a better outcome. We put ourselves in the line of fire — while Oklahoma Citians kept right on electing and reelecting the likes of Istook, Salyer and Cornett. The record and any hope for improvement now inescapably demands the determined, focused pursuit of public accountability for the fathers and mothers of these disasters.

Right now all eyes should be on the streetcar project, truthfully. If this succeeds, it opens up some interesting possibilities for transit in OKC.

I’m not sure in 1996 we were ready to take one what could be a really important part of OKCs future. Back then it was an excursion. Now I think we’re moving towards a true transit philosohpy. Those two wouldn’t have mixed.

In Oklahoma City, some of it bought “the river boats” in the “Oklahoma River.” That’s “transit.” Yep. The ones with the big oil companies’ names all over ‘em. An ugly joke. But no rail transit — despite the state’s former wealth of longstanding, downtown-centered railway assets.

Transit Trust Fund money bought the OKC Union Station terminal — way back in 1989 — the grant application presented with volumes of documentation of that facility’s obvious suitability as a regional transit hub. It was destroyed by ODOT anyway — while folks like Meg Salyer charged that Union Station advocates were never clear about what they wanted to save.

Strangely, Mayor Rocky Anderson of Salt Lake City understood it — and called ODOT’s plan to wreck the rail yard “insane” in a KGOU radio interview.

Dr. Dan Monaghan of DART “got it” and repeatedly urged careful preservation of the facility, lamenting the mistake Dallas made when their rail yard was halved for “development.” “You’re gonna need your rail yard — all of it — and sooner than you think,” he said.

Denver Transit’s funding was reportedly threatened by Istook’s thugs after it diplomatically urged OKC leaders to compare their Union Station to Denver’s before shooting all Oklahomans in the feet.

World renowned Transportation Economist Malise C. Dick detailed his criticism of the “New Crosstown plan” to wreck a statewide rail center for 4 miles of road. “It violates every world standard for an acceptable project,” he said. “It’s the worst project I’ve ever seen.”

Nationally respected OKC planning director of the era, Garner Stoll, made similar warnings even as he resisted more deficit-financed sprawl. So, lacking the cajones to fire him outright, the upright and visionary OKC council courageously “defunded his position.”

ODOT — run by a former asphalt lobbyist with no college degree at all (yes, Fallin just re-upped him as Director of both ODOT and Turnpikes and Transportation Secretary — but “you kids go on to school now and study hard…”) — wasn’t impressed by any of this. His “$236 million project” now nears the “billion” mark.

OKC leadership could not be moved to ensure that this great gift of our great-grandparents’ generation to our own children got where it was meant to go.

A downtown streetcar alone versus a downtown streetcar connected to the metro, the region, the state and the world via the city’s historic rail passenger center? No comparison — and far too little far too late if the Middle East explodes.

As my now-18-year-old daughter said the day ODOT’s bulldozers began wrecking Union Station’s yard — “Dad, Oklahoma City didn’t deserve Union Station.” Allow me to humbly suggest, however that Oklahoma City quite richly deserves the trouble it has now brought on itself.

I don’t see how any heavy hitters in OKC benefitted from lack of rail here though. That sounds like the same made up class paranoia we hear about MAPS 3 and Project 180.

I agree with Larry. It would have been nice if we could have simply gotten our measly streetcar system, all we were ever asking for, a long time ago. But I would say it’s still good that we’re getting it now. Istook should renounce his Oklahoma ties for what he did to Oklahoma. A true creature of partisan Washington if there ever were one..he was also one of the top congressmen embroiled in the Abramoff fiasco.

And are we really going to have to revisit the debate whether rail is right for OKC? Newsflash: less-dense cities have succeeded with rail, like Phoenix. LRT brings density up. It doesn’t matter because we’ve always wanted to do streetcar first. We have the density downtown for that. Streetcar will help us continue to build up density even faster. There is not a single non-fixed non-rail mode of transit that will influence development of a city as much.

The arguments that rail is not right for OKC (but yet it somehow is for SLC and Phoenix?) are so worn and already disproved by the voters who showed up and passed MAPS3 by a comfortable margin. It was the streetcar initiative that carried the entire ballot with voters. OKC citizens want streetcar. They want transit options for a change. They want to see a different, more interesting OKC.