right Sketched plans for the forthcoming hub
“The Santa Fe site was absolutely head and shoulders above the other two,” Tennant said. “Some people at our public meetings said, ‘We could have told you that,’ and maybe they could have, and probably we all a year and a half ago, sitting around this table, we might have said, ‘That’s the best location because that’s where history said it should be.’” The Association of Central Oklahoma Governments, the Central Oklahoma Transportation and Parking Authority, the state Department of Transportation, city offices and several suburban municipal governments have been involved in studying regional transit, and the hub location into which a commuter rail system would flow.
The hub would connect several transportation modes in one area, such as bus, bike, car and the Amtrak service, but also others that do not yet exist, such as the MAPS 3 downtown modern streetcar line, commuter rail and possibly a high-speed rail line, making it a “Grand Central Station for Oklahoma,” Tennant said.
Download a PDF file containing the Intermodal Transportation Hub Master Plan.
The hub likely will open another connection for pedestrians between downtown and Bricktown by featuring a pedestrian walkway underneath the railroad tracks, Tennant said.
MAPS 3 transit money has been set aside for the hub, while the city also is applying for a federal grant to help with the first phase. Additional federal funding is being sought, and a prerequisite to that funding — an alternatives analysis study — is under way. A request for proposals to conduct the commuter rail study is expected by early October.
“The hub is both a connection to our past and to our future, but it’s also a connection arching over the railroad that connects downtown to Bricktown,” Tennant said. “It accomplishes mobility, it accomplishes enhancing transit’s image in the community, and we believe it will be a catalyst for continued economic development in this part of downtown.”
The price tag for all three phases is expected to be about $127 million spread out between federal and state funding, as well as several cities participating in the regional transit plan, Tennant said.
Who is "Jacobs Engineering?" None other than the good 'ol ODOT huntin' dog formerly known as Carter Burgess -- the outfit that "was willing to ignore the presence of the OKC Union Station rail yard for purposes of the last "Fixed Guideway Study," apparently in return for a big, juicy design contract on the ugly, hyper-expensive debacle known as "The New I-40 Crosstown."
Lots of pitfalls in allowing "planning consultants" to bid on design and construction. Lots of obvious conflicts of interest; "stuff like that."
What's not in question is that there was ever really any question of "parity" between the former Santa Fe depot and sprawling OKC Union Station with its immense parking potential, 8-block-long, 12-track-wide rail yard serving three passenger platforms connected to the terminal via underground passenger and express freight passages and ample potential bus space. Compared to the cramped Santa Fe, wedged, as it is, between Bricktown and the Central Business District -- right there in the middle of the already-congested downtown furball -- Union Station was the right facility in the right place at the right time. Oh -- and OKC government had gotten it for nothing, fully restored by a former owner -- a gift of the Federal Transit Administration.
Somehow, however, this treasure was lost to "3.96 miles of road that could have been put nearly anywhere" -- a loss inescapably facilitated and profited from by Jacobs -- uh, er -- Carter Burgess.
Here's how it is, folks: Bricktown is no place for a regional transit center. Only people who didn't know what such a facility is supposed to do -- or profited from obscuring the truth -- would insist otherwise. Aside from the cramped space, and no parking -- there's the little matter of "50 fast daily freights" plowing right through the middle of the narrow, elevated rail facility there, and that's not going to change. Yep. That's right -- Union Station didn't face such a challenge.
Don't let 'em waste our money or our time, folks. It's time for some cold, hard common sense to be talked about this project -- and, quite clearly, such sense won't be available from either Jacobs Engineering or the OKC city council.