Houston traffic...

Much has been made about Houston traffic coming into conflict with the Light Rail that runs for several miles up and down Main Street between downtown and Relient Stadium (and through areas like the Texas Medical Center, Museum District, and Midtown Houston). They even did a feature on it here at LightRailNow.org. In 2004 alone there were 63 collisions with the LRT, which means more than one per week, a collision rate that is more than 25 times the national average for public transit trains that operate in street right of ways. I'll quote from LRN:

While several other cities, such as San Jose, Portland, Boston, New Orleans, Denver, and Salt Lake City, all have street-running light rail and streetcar systems, drivers in those cities for the most part seem to be able to avoid crashing into their trains. Unfortunately, that's not the case in Houston. The propensity of local drivers to smack into the new train system has even become national news.

The collision rate between cars and cars in Houston also goes without saying..as being quite high. In 2002 Houston had 12.45 traffic fatalities per 100,000 people, far higher than say, New York City (4.39). These are BAD statistics.

According to the INRIX National Traffic Scorecard Houston traffic is also quite epic, and it is the thing that many people especially know Houston for, a shame. Houston ranks #6, and by comparison, OKC ranks #40 and Dallas ranks #5 (after LA, NYC, Chicago, DC). I am personally promoting Houston to #5 because in my opinion Dallas has the best traffic out of any big city due to its overblown freeway system.

Houston traffic was also spotlighted by Budweiser's Real Men of Genius:



On a side note, for anyone interested in checking out Houston's cosmopolitan and international flavor, check out this really awesome photo set on SSC. Just to balance out the negative coverage of a city I love.

So the point is, yes, there have been collisions with LRT in Houston. I've heard a lot made out of that fact. But..look at the surrounding context of HOUSTON TRAFFIC. Again, to quote from LRN:

Furthermore, the Texas Transportation institute (TTI), which was recently hired by METRO to assess safety along the METRORail corridor, found no fundamental design flaws in the rail system itself that would contribute to the high rate of car-train collisions. However, these facts are generally ignored by local rail critics. METRO built the train down Main Street, they argue, so therefore METRO, not the city's careless drivers, is to blame.

Check out this awesome video from the Houston Metro "Danger Train." (nobody was fatally injured in any of these accidents luckily)


Houston, we have a problem. (But not any other city)

Route evolution

Let's get straight to the issue surrounding COTPA's Let's Talk Transit forums. What people want to know is the route of the proposed streetcar system, when it's going to be built, and issues like that.

If you're still back on Page 1 and wondering what kind of rail we're doing and questions like that, just research "streetcar." Throw out everything you know about heavy rail, commuter rail, light rail, etc--those types of mass transit are not designed to work effectively and safely within pedestrian spaces, do not make quick stops, travel too fast, and are cost prohibitive for a condensed (LOL at that one) downtown area. Streetcar is a cost-effective option that is also clearly the best-adapted to what we hope may at some point in the future be a good pedestrian area.

Now moving on. The route. That is the real issue, and probably one of the most complex issues that remain unresolved with MAPS 3 (besides how a powerless advisory board can possibly be relevant in anyway). It involves many complex issues, and possibly politics although I hope it doesn't come down to that.

Because of streetcar's incredible ability to stimulate infill development within 4 blocks of a streetcar line, you have to look at the potential of certain key nodes of activity in downtown, and not just what is presently there. With that said, you also want a good mix of current hotspots such as Bricktown, the Devon Tower site, Ford Center/Cox Center, etc. In my opinion the goal should be to maximize the best mix of potential infill stretches that link current hotspots. One example is the area between the CBD and the Walker Circle in MidTown, another example is the area between Bricktown and the OUHSC/Oklahoma Health Center area.

I would also encourage anyone looking at a route to heavily consider the potential to expand the system. For instance, if you go with a certain route, consider how an expansion to further-out important activity areas (such as perhaps the State Capitol, OCU, etc) would tie-in with what you're creating.

Then there are technical ramifications. Consideration of locating a hub for the system. What type of route configuration, are we going to go with a loop system, or a hub-and-spoke? I tend to prefer the loop because it's simple and incredibly easy to expand, difficult to mess up from a planning perspective--and with planning being what it is in the Heartland you definitely want to minimize the risk in that area. The mayor seems to prefer the hub-and-spoke system based off of what has been in the media, and I'm not one to question the planning expertise of Mayor Cornett. Actually though, the hub-and-spoke does offer a few advantages, the most important being that it seems you can cover more of downtown using the same 5-6 mile distance of track. That is a clear advantage that could make hub-and-spoke the best option for OKC if it chose to go in that direction with the streetcar project.

Like I mentioned, a loop route would be almost too easy. A hub-and-spoke system would require heavy coordination of tying in the different streetcar lines, a schedule that is a work of art, and of course it would require that every line be a double track.

Here's an interesting hub-and-spoke route that I put together. There are three overall lines: the Blue Line is just a strip down Sheridan Ave, the Red Line is just a loop that goes through MidTown and ties into..the Orange Line, which connects downtown and Bricktown to the OUHSC area and closely resembles the abstract route proposed by the Modern Transit Project led by Jeff Bezdek.

This is a good route in my opinion because it does a good job of tying sites that currently have high importance with areas that could see a lot of infill. The infill is important because that is almost the only area in which OKC stands to get an economic benefit out of streetcar, and the economic impact of downtown development shouldn't be underestimated. The areas in this system that would see a ton of infill are along Sheridan in the Film Row area, the "Medical Business District" along 10th Street, the area along Walker before you get to the Walker Circle, and also the area along Lincoln would stand to be built up.

The system also ties in a good array of important sites, starting with the hub which would be placed at Santa Fe Station. In the past I've talked about the opportunity to expand the Santa Fe Depot and build a true transit hub that ties into the east side of the Cox Center (which is currently an embarrassing blank wall), but it's the same general area. Realistically with streetcar, you don't need a hub, but it can be a valuable bonus to tie the streetcar into Amtrak, potential light rail/commuter rail to other parts of the city, bus services, among other modes of transportation. Other important sites that are linked by this system are Bricktown (from end to end), the OUHSC, Devon Tower, the Cox Center/Ford Center, Myriad Gardens, and OCU Law School along the Blue Line and the OUHSC leg of the Orange Line. The Red Line connects the Arts District, City Hall, Civic Center Music Hall, OKC Museum of Art, Walker Circle (restaurants), and so on. The Orange Line goes all the way down North Broadway and feeds off of the Automobile Alley area--imagine how awesome streetcar will look gliding along its rails with the historic storefronts of A-Alley behind it and the CBD skyline off in the distance.

And then, as for tie-in to potential expansion, here's what I've got in mind:

You can see where the goal here is mainly to connect the one remaining big activity area (the State Capitol) to the rest of the system and for the rest of the expansions, I think the best idea is to follow historic precedent. There are certain historic areas of our city that were originally built around streetcar expansions in the first place and these areas today still offer the best chance for success. For the most part, these are also the denser, cooler strips that could use a real hand in redevelopment--such as the Plaza District or Uptown. Future streetcar expansions should connect hot spots such as OCU, 23rd Street, the Asian District, Uptown, Plaza District, perhaps Western Avenue, Paseo, etc. Imagine the diversity that someone from out of town would come in contact with simply by riding the streetcar of OKC.

Jacksonville?

Jacksonville, FL: City pop -- 807,815. Metro pop -- 1,313,228.


Ever wonder about Jacksonville? Well, they wondered about us.. a really spiffy Jacksonville blog wrote a glowing review of OKC's urban rebirth, focusing on MAPS and the passage of MAPS 3. They made some key comparisons to OKC, comparing things like sprawl, density, convention center, infill obstacles, walkability, etc. They even mentioned two blog posts of mine, so that's kind of cool.

I hope that Jacksonville can take a few positives out of our book and put them to good use. And I hate to say this after the glowing review that a Jacksonville blogger wrote of OKC's progress, but I think that Jacksonville presents a really good case example of what not to do for OKC. I think that the two are incredibly similar cities, just that one is moving in the right direction, the other not so much.

As OKC continues to sell out Thunder games, Jacksonville is losing the Jaguars.. they will probably fill LA's new football stadium once it is finished in 2-3 years. Jacksonville is also highly sprawled, and probably getting worse--with the advent of flashy new urbanist town centers and a development boom along Jacksonville Beach, well east of the city core, distractions from downtown abound. If OKC had not passed MAPS this is exactly where we as a community would be. Granted, the Jacksonville economy is better than ours was in 1993, and they are growing at a faster pace than us -- typical for cities in Florida, which Jax is easily one of the more traditional cities in Florida (not as flashy and fake as Orlando, Miami, and Tampa).

Jacksonville's convention center is even more inadequate than ours. Their downtown transit is a joke, because not only do they have Oklahoma Spirit Trolley lookalikes roaming the streets empty, they've also got monorail. Monorail is a funny concept because at first blush I can get over my initial skepticism over monorail and understand why a city like Jacksonville would go with that. Being a city divided by the St. John's River, it makes sense to bridge the urban area with elevated monorail. Where things go wrong is with the implementation on the street level though. Little Rock, another town that bridges a river with rail transit, chose streetcar instead and has gotten far more positive results. Compare the two:




Look at all of those people on the sidewalks of Little Rock trying to board the streetcar! That just screams success from an urban planning standpoint. Pat yourself on the back, Little Rock.. I pretty much do nothing but praise thee on this blog. Jacksonville, on the other hand, not so good to say the least. Transportation officials predicted that the Little Rock system would have 1,000 riders a week (found on a website with an incredible anti-rail bias), it ended up having over 3,500 passengers a week according to that source, and 2,900 passengers a day according to this source. Jacksonville has 1,700 riders a day but even if it did or didn't have more riders than the Little Rock system, you wouldn't know it because none of it is at the street level. A monorail system is the same as our Underground, in that it gets pedestrians from point a to point b across downtown and keeps them OFF the streets while doing it. A horrible idea. For Jacksonville, it's been a failure, because they could have done a streetcar instead.



Downtown revitalization wise, Jacksonville has one really cool area called Springfield, north of their downtown area, which you can read about on the same blog. This area is really unlike any of the downtown OKC neighborhoods, in that this is more single family housing. I would say it's really comparable to perhaps The Paseo/Jefferson Park area of OKC (except that it's not as hip as The Paseo) or more closely resembles a smaller-scale version of The Heights in Houston. The problem with it is that non-walkable arterial streets cut it off from the adjacent downtown area, so there is no flow and downtown Jax doesn't feel the progress. Downtown Jax itself is full of grit and wear, very few restaurants and lofts and stuff of the sort compared to OKC, although 60,000 people do work there during the day (more than OKC, which is around 50,000). So much potential exists in some of their downtown neighborhoods, such as La Villa, for downtown loft conversions, much like we've done in Deep Deuce and Automobile Alley in OKC.

I think that eventually cities that have the potential to be great urban gems find ways to get there. Jacksonville will find a way to take advantage of its historic inner city, it just needs a new coat of varnish and a few bells and whistles. Cities like Jacksonville that are still growing can always begin to do things right, any time they chose. It's not like Cleveland or Buffalo where your resources are highly limited and you can literally only do so much. Cities like Jacksonville, Little Rock, and OKC have limitless potential because they are still growing and economically strong, BUT they aren't the vapid sprawl cesspools that places like the rest of Florida, Arizona, LA, etc have become.. All Jacksonville needs to do is get people to fall in love with downtown again, as people in OKC already have.

ODOT high-speed rail meeting

This is a taping of a high-speed rail meeting that ODOT had this last week in Tulsa to talk to citizens about the recent application for Stimulus funding for the OKC-Tulsa link.

Council moves on commuter rail

3 new revelations in getting commuter rail up and running in OKC..

1. OKC City Council voted this week to pass a resolution in support of Midwest City's request for federal grants to do commuter rail between Tinker AFB and Downtown OKC.

2. The resolution, according to Mayor Mick indicates OKC's willingness to come up with a funding match should it be necessary to obtain a federal grant. Also the resolution indicated interest in obtaining federal grants for a Norman-Edmond line, yet I think that's neither here nor there and they should have left that out.

3. On the same measure they also asked ACOG to do a study to determine the best location for a possible downtown multi-modal transit hub.

Of course with that, the question remains.. don't we think we should hold off on a MAPS 3 package until we know the best location for a downtown transit hub? Believe it or not transit is kinda important.

More on the Midwest City line
The route follows an existing rail right-of-way that the state bought up for cheap (about $350,000), which according to ACOG officials, gives Midwest City a $20 million advantage over other cities when it comes to putting in a commuter rail link to Downtown OKC. The total cost of the proposed line is slightly above $12 million for five miles (route map here). About $5 million for the rail cars, and about $7 million for rehabilitation of the rails.

With all that said, I think it's fair to question whether this line is really a good idea. What is it really connecting? Midwest City jokes aside, this is basically connecting downtown to Tinker AFB..connecting the #1 concentration of jobs to the #2 concentration of jobs (granted there are 55,000 people that live in MWC). Whereas a Norman-Edmond line would connect several larger residential suburbs to downtown and link a few inner-city areas together as well, obviously a better deal.

Before you're put off on whether MWC/Tinker needs a commuter rail line to downtown, consider that the recent 2005 Downtown Housing Study cited that the overwhelming majority of downtown residents do not even work in downtown, or close to downtown. So in the context of growing downtown, stop thinking of downtown as a concentration of jobs and start thinking of it as a viable residential community no different from the Deer Creek or Moore areas, just a different style. With over 26,000 employees at Tinker, think of how accessible this makes downtown housing to thousands of stable, high incomes.

In France.."Those who ask, eat." ODOT finally asks (for rail funding).

When I was on my senior trip a few years ago, me and my parents went to France, which is a country I like to joke about a lot. That aside, they have some really great sayings there. One of the biggest culture shocks is that in Paris people are NOT clamoring to provide a million expensive services to you, in fact, they make it a pain in the ass. When you sit down in restaurants, a waiter will not automatically greet you and all that good stuff, but you have to ASK to eat and literally hail a waiter. "Those who ask..eat." I actually like that because it is very similar to life, where the only way usually to get what you want is to ask for it, something most Americans do not understand.

For years we've all been complaining about the state of public transit in Oklahoma, and the simple fact that we need to invest way more than we currently are, into the system. This goes true for the city level, state level, and the federal level, which oddly enough for most municipalities that do things right, federal money is the key ingredient. Well, no more (hopefully). ODOT made the first step towards, for the first time ever, formally requesting federal funding for a bona fide Oklahoma high-speed rail link. Not only will it extend the Heartland Flyer up to Tulsa, but it will also include massive upgrades for the existing Heartland Flyer at least down to the Red River, if not all the way to Fort Worth, enabling the entire system to be high-speed.

Top speeds between OKC and Fort Worth would reach 90 mph and an average of over 60 mph (currently the top speed is 79 with an average of 50), while top speeds between OKC and Tulsa would reach 150 mph and an average speed of over 110 mph. This is the future. No longer will Amtrak service for Oklahoma only go to Fort Worth, and no longer will Tulsa be the largest city in the nation not served by Amtrak.

ODOT's cost estimates for the project come in just under $2 billion, a fraction of the $13 billion in federal funds Obama has identified in order to get the ball rolling on high-speed rail. If approved (which in all likelihood, it will be approved for funding, it's just a matter of it covering half of the cost or more, or all..even though the application does NOT require a state match) work could begin in 2010 and riders could be on the system by 2016, which IMO is a pretty aggressive timetable--the kind of thing I like to see for long-overdue projects such as this. Helping the likelihood funding will be secured, is that the ODOT proposal follows exactly what the Obama administration laid out for the South-Central Corridor.

I'd also like to remind folks that we would already have light rail in OKC if a certain former (local!) Congressman had not blocked federal funding that we surely would have gotten to supplement Maps 1. To that extent, it's nice to see that state agencies are once again being proactive in attempting to secure federal funds that as we can see with the Stimulus (not to mention all the other cities that got fed $$ for rail), are just there for the taking.

Critical thoughts on COTPA's leadership of the Maps III transit initiative

Vs.







Everywhere I turn on the web, from Steve's blog, Blair Humphrey's blog, OkMet, OKC Talk, and everywhere else, I can't help but notice the consensus that a downtown transit system has been replaced by anything and everything else. For the last two years the mayor has been campaigning for light rail, using the issue as the centerpiece of his civic initiative to make OKC more pedestrian-friendly, even lamenting the issue of streets built for cars, not people. I always thought he was spot on, and many of us had thought he had been turned into a rail advocate.

Undoubtedly I think we were wrong.. it seems that Mayor Mick is a pragmatic politician after all. When the public current seemed to favor light rail above any other potential initiative, we saw the mayor talk about how badly OKC needs something different for its transit system. Now that the business community has gotten serious about the convention center and the river, there's a lot of suspicion that transit has been relegated to the bottom of the food chain.

In many ways, it has been. Mayor Mick and the Chamber folks didn't necessarily put together a list that pushed transit towards the bottom of priorities. Instead what they did, whether as an intentional slight or not, was put COTPA in charge of the initiative. This means that the same people who have been running every transit proposal into the ground for the last two decades are now inflicting their usual incompetence on another great idea.

Two decades ago when city leaders embarked to put together Maps I, Ron Norrick initially wanted the proposition to include a downtown fixed transit system (I'm not sure if it was streetcar or light rail, but I think light rail, if I remember right). I was probably in 1st grade in Galveston, TX back when Maps I was passed, but from what I've heard and read, it was a combination of bad project management and former Congressman Ernest Istook's hidden agenda that killed the idea of light rail in OKC during the 1990s. Just think..if someone had been a better project manager, or had Ernest Istook not been taking money from the Oklahoma highway lobby..OKC would have had light rail before many of the cities that are now light years ahead of us. Like Dallas. They've ran the city bus system into the ground. If you disagree, try to make sense of their website for routes and schedules, etc. They've wreaked havoc on the downtown streetscape with their unsightly public garages that have ruined the look and feel of much of downtown. Essentially, where there is failure in downtown OKC, COTPA has usually been right behind it.

Many other blogs have been reporting that COTPA's transit initiative has been underwhelming city leaders, at best. This at the same time as fabulous presentations on Mike Knopp's proposal for more Oklahoma River investment, the business community wholly behind the convention center proposal, the Bricktown community behind an extension of the canal, and the bio community behind the idea of a new bio research facility in the medical district. Everyone has proved without a doubt that their project is worthy of Maps III funding except COTPA. They've officially ran out of ideas, ran out of steam, ran the downtown streetcar intitiative into the ground, and now they need to be ran out of town.

COTPA needs to be replaced with something else. A temporary solution is for the City to recognize Jeff Bezdek's Modern Transit Project group as the leadership behind the transit issue. It seems like a no-brainer. This group has passion, is personally invested in the issue (as downtown residents), they have new blood and new ideas, and they have done an excellent job of marketing what they are all about. Nobody can say they have no idea what they're proposing. They've clearly defined their project as STREETCAR, not LIGHT RAIL. They've done research and proposed a cost, they've proposed a route, and they've also done a brilliant job of integrating the streetcar project with other sustainability goals, by proposing that locally-harvested wind power be used to power the system. They've defined environmental benefits, sustainable benefits, health benefits, transit benefits, and urban benefits. They've also defined benefits from a regional competition standpoint, by comparing OKC to every other NBA city. Almost all of which have fixed rail systems.

If this private group were given the chance to make presentations alongside Knopp and the convention center boosters, they would knock the socks off of attendees, and we would see a downtown streetcar system be a virtual guarantee as a part of Maps III. If we continue to let the "know-how" at COTPA dictate the transit initiative, we will end up with no fixed transit system, and merely some token bus upgrades. It is better in the short-term, and the long-term, if slowly COTPA's responsibilities get moved over to other more captivating entities and COTPA is phased out.

"Money Machine"

This should be pretty common sense. But believe it or not, streetcars are being hailed a "money machine" for building cities. Urban development follows the transportation investments, and in almost every instance of a city getting serious on putting in light rail (LRT), streetcars, commuter rail--whatever as long as it's not the cheapo scam known as bus rapid transit (BRT)--a major explosion in urban development has followed these transit lines. Whether the city is as big and hopelessly sprawled as Phoenix, AZ..or as small and quaint as Charlottesville, VA, this is is a trend that has proven true. Rail transit is the way to go, and the investment will be more than worth it in the end. There is no reason for OKC and Tulsa to not be BUILDING (not planning or intending to plan) a better transit system right now. We've been talking about this for years now. In OKC we've been trying to get light rail in downtown for over a decade now when it was originally included in MAPS 1 (and I bet we all wish we had gone ahead with light rail back then).

What you have here is a system being put in Charlottesville, VA, population 45,049. The orange is streetcar, which connects UVA to downtown Charlottesville all the way across town. Not even kidding here. So if a picturesque Appalachian college town can do light rail or streetcar, WHY CAN'T WE?? There are well over a million people in the Greater OKC Area. If we got serious about a full-fledged system and broke ground in a week on one, there would be at least 1.5 million in the Greater OKC Area by the time the starter lines were all finished. How many highway projects will we have spent billions of dollars on by then?

Not convinced? Then read this. Last month at a transit symposium in Dallas (and trust me, Dallas transit symposiums go the same way as ones in OKC go, where consultants start off by boldly telling them their city stinks) a writer for the Dallas Observer, Jim Schutze, wrote the following:

"Streetcars did come up. The former mayor of Charlottesville, Va., home of UVA, spoke and talked about how they are the smallest city in the country with a planned streetcar, apparently from the The University of Virginia campus to a downtown area. He said the streetcar won’t be on the ground for another seven years, but, because developers believe the city means business about it, the values and actual redevelopment along the planned route have gone through the roof, a point he illustrated with some amazing photos. Strictly from a development and tax base perspective, a well-placed streetcar line looks pretty much like a money machine."

IN a city with the famed DART system and the Trinity Railway, arguably a transit brightspot in the middle of the Sun Belt, they still realize they have a long ways to go. They have brought in some people who have done incredible things with transit. I think it's incredible for a city of 45,000 people to be doing streetcars. I think it's even more incredible that for this city of 45,000 it is still so true that density will follow the transit investments. There is no need to wait for an area to achieve a certain level of density before even reluctantly deciding to go forward with rail. You just pick an area that you want to see built up and you be proactive by shaping growth yourself AND not letting growth shape your transit network (that would be reactive planning).

Completely tied

For a while I've been noticing the results of the poll that is being taken on the left margin of this blog that will be going on for the next two months. I want to point out that since the inception of this poll the race between Light Rail and C2S as OKC's most-pressing priority has been neck-and-neck, with neither ever really having a majority. It was 1-1, then 2-2, and so on, each time I've checked it. It is now 10-10.

Personally, I voted for light rail. I believe that OKC is big enough to be able to finance a light rail system of decent proportions, and any city that can financially pull it off can become a light rail city regardless of factors that detractors bring up like density, traffic, etc. Basically my belief is that any major city that wants to be a light rail city can do so, all it needs to do is build light rail. Light rail itself transforms any city into a light rail city because of the way it builds up density, adds to the walkability of an area, etc.. even in cities such as Phoenix, where light rail was a success in terms of spurring urban development in Phoenix, probably the worst example of sprawl in the nation.

If light rail can bring up Phoenix's density, it can at least have a similar effect on OKC, if not more drastic. This is because OKC is already a light rail city even without it presently, since OKC was built on light rail. The reason strips such as NW 23rd and Capitol Hill exist is because those were well-traveled streetcar lines. Neighborhoods like Jefferson Park and Gatewood were literally 'streetcar suburbs.' OKC, being a city that was designed around rail when it was born, will see an amazing impact and transformation back to its roots once light rail is running in the city again. Light rail can do for OKC everything that we're looking for: a thriving, bustling downtown with lots of street activity, more density, a decrease in obesity (America's fattest city), and more business at the center of the city as visitors are whisked from Bricktown to MidTown in a New York minute.

That's not to say that C2S isn't an equally bold and important venture that OKC should be focusing more on. OKC is in the lucky position it wasn't 20 years ago where it has multiple things going on right now that will be able to propel the city forward to the next level. Light rail would be the best stimulus for gentrifying the rest of the inner city, C2S is important so that downtown has a new, defining part of downtown, highways are important so that growth further from downtown is managed and the suburbs and downtown don't feel segregated, WRWA expansion is important so that OKC can reach the world non-stop, the new convention center is important so that OKC can position itself as a national leader in business, and the Medical District planning is important because it too is going to become a defining area of OKC, almost a research-oriented C2S, as construction is about to take off on many new facilities that will make OKC a leader in medical research. It's a good time to be in OKC because never before could we have actually had a decent debate over which one thing out of many is the one that will take OKC the furthest. If you voted in the poll, you ought to take a brief few seconds to mention what you voted for and why, and I'll do a follow-up on that later. If you haven't voted in the poll, go vote!