Options for getting around OKC set to grow

Elected leaders are determined that options for getting around Oklahoma City include more than cars.

Among the city council’s priorities is a goal of developing “a transportation system that works for all residents.” Department heads briefed the council Tuesday on progress.

Planning Director Aubrey McDermid said transportation systems are “the bones that support our city’s social and economic fabric.”

“Land use and transportation have such an intrinsic tie to each other,” she said. “The investment in our transportation system is so important in guiding our growth.”

The city has 8,000 lane miles of streets, and is one year into a voterapproved crash effort to resurface deteriorating roadways, financed by the 1-cent MAPS for streets sales tax extension.

McDermid said the city has 2,500 miles of sidewalks and 248 miles of bike lanes and trails, with plans to invest bond and sales tax proceeds in 110 more miles of sidewalks and 88 miles of bicycle paths.

She said the bus system serves 240 of the 620 square miles within the city limits.

The $136 million MAPS 3 streetcar system going into service this month will open the way for residents and office workers to more easily circulate throughout downtown.

She called the streetcar “an economic development catalyst and tool sustaining the viability of downtown for many generations.”

All options are in play and essential to the city’s future.

Seventy percent of millennials — those ranging in age from their early 20s to their mid-30s — are power users of modern, multimodal urban transit networks.

“This trend is not a trend that’s going to be going away,” McDermid said.

She noted the recent adoption of a bicycle and pedestrian master plan.

And the city’s guide for growth has, as a matter of policy, a preference for “livable streets” with onstreet parking, bike lanes and other improvements that support community-oriented land uses.

Oklahoma City is a partner with Norman,

Moore, Del City, Midwest City and Edmond in a Regional Transit Authority to develop suburban-urban links via express buses and rail.

“We are building a transportation system not only for our current population but for changing demographics and for our future,” McDermid said.