ALL ABOARD?
City leaders mull Sunday bus service
Sunday bus service is included in the Oklahoma City public transit system’s budget proposal for next year.
Adding Sunday service would be a major step for a system often singled out as an outlier among major cities for its limited evening service and no service on Sundays.
The city council will make the final decisions on the 2018-19 budget in June.
James Cooper, a member of the Central Oklahoma Transportation and Parking Authority (COTPA) board, said he had not seen the proposal but believes Sunday service must be a priority.
“Yes, I want it. Yes, it needs to happen,” said Cooper, who voted against a streetcar operations contract last year because the agreement provided only limited Sunday rail service.
“I stand precisely where I stood a year ago,” Cooper said Friday. “Sunday bus and streetcar service are nonnegotiable. We have to have it.”
Residents who depend on transit to get to work need seven-day transit to hang onto their jobs, Cooper said.
Sunday bus service to duplicate Saturday service is part of the Transportation Department’s 2018-19 budget proposal, said Laura Johnson, an assistant city manager.
Buses would run on 16 routes from 6:30 a.m. to 6:30 p.m., she said.
Together with the new downtown streetcar service, Embark buses would form a limited, but integrated, transit system throughout the weekend.
Sunday transit has advocates at Embark and
on the COTPA board, Cooper said.
He said the city council now “has to understand that people work on Sunday.”
City budget managers are reviewing departmental requests. The city manager is to submit the 201819 budget to the council May 1.
The council will have three public hearings before voting to adopt the budget June 5. The new budget year begins July 1.
COTPA has a six-year, $17.3 million contract with Herzog Transit Services of Irving, Texas, for streetcar operations.
The agreement provides for all-day service six days a week on the main line. A shorter “Bricktown loop” is to have supplemental allday streetcars Fridays and Saturdays.
Additional hours are allocated to meet irregular demand, such as when conventions are in town, and for special events, such as concerts and Sunday evening Thunder basketball games.
Oklahoma City’s third streetcar is to be delivered Monday from the Brookville Equipment Corp. manufacturing plant in western Pennsylvania.
Streetcars are trucked to the city and transferred to the rails at the streetcar maintenance facility at SW 7 Street and Hudson Avenue. Testing is underway on the Hudson Avenue track, near the maintenance garage. Oklahoma City is buying seven Liberty model streetcars from Brookville, paying about $5 million apiece.
Streetcar service is expected to begin in December.