Local News
Downtown future may ride on transit
EDMOND — The 1998 Downtown Master Plan Review Task Force recently was given a presentation of how regional transit could impact downtown Edmond’s future.
“I don’t think anything’s really broken with downtown. There’s nothing to fix. It’s really about making it that much better,” said Douglas Tennant of Edmond, a Jacobs company consultant in urban design and planning.
MAPS 1 in Oklahoma City was created because Oklahoma City was broken, he said. In turn, the City of Edmond is doing planning from a position of strength, Tennant said.
In 2005, his firm did a 25-year transit plan for the Oklahoma Parking and Transit Authority. This plan identified seven corridors emanating from downtown Oklahoma City and three crosstown corridors.
“It really has become the foundation for the Oklahoma City MAPS 3 program,” Tennant said. “What their MAPS 3 contains is a $130 million downtown street car circulator system.”
The regional transit dialogue was started as a result of MAPS 3, Tennant said. If Oklahoma City voters approve MAPS 3 on Dec. 8, a streetcar system would be created with connections to the state Capitol and key interest points. Tennant said polling on downtown transit shows overall public approval.
As a result, the Association of Central Oklahoma Governments has been looking more closely at regional transit that would be implemented in phases, Tennant said. Potentially, people from the region could travel downtown on commuter rail to link to an enhanced trolley system that would take them to a destination point.
CDBG Grant Coordinator Shannon Entz said federal stimulus funding has sped up the transit dialogue on many levels. Cities like Edmond, Norman and Oklahoma City have been able to purchase more transit vehicles and ridership is increasing, Entz said.
“Six months or a year ago, this wasn’t on the front burner at all,” Entz said.
The connection between downtown Oklahoma City and Tinker Air Force Base would be in place if stimulus grant funding is approved, Tennant said.
“Ridership forecasts, they started going through the roof when we started looking at if we gave them better options to get around,” he said. “And this became critically important when gas became $4 a gallon.”
Edmond and Norman are the highest priorities based on ridership, Tennant said.
Phase 1 would go to the north side of Norman and down the Northwest Expressway in Oklahoma City. Phase 2 would enter the core of the University of Oklahoma.
“Phase 3 brings in Edmond,” Tennant said. “Again, you all have probably the strongest ridership numbers, so that might change.”
ACOG has created a regional transit partnership of key players from Edmond, Midwest City, Oklahoma City and Norman because “you’ve got to be ready when the iron is hot,” Tennant said. The regional transit committee is focusing on how to share the costs of developing transit to create a benefit for the greater metropolitan area, Tennant said.
jcoburn@edmondsun.com | 341-2121, ext. 114
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