City’s streetcars open for business

NINE years after Oklahoma City voters approved a streetcar system as part of the 1-cent MAPS 3 sales tax, they’re getting it beginning Friday. With a $136 million price tag, it’s a huge piece of an evolving — and improving — transit system for the city.

The streetcar system, under construction for the past 22 months, will open debt free, as is the case with all the MAPS projects. The system comprises seven sleek, brightly colored, low-floor streetcars that will travel on roughly 5 miles of track in downtown and Bricktown. Rides will be free for the first three weeks; after that, it’s $1 per ride.

At a recent city council meeting, the city’s planning director, Aubrey McDermid, described the streetcar as “an economic development catalyst and tool sustaining the viability of downtown for many generations.”

McDermid also noted that 70 percent of millennials are power users of modern, multimodal urban transit networks. “This trend is not a trend that’s going to be going away,” she said.

The streetcars will help to meet that demand, and more help is on the way.

Last week, U.S. Sen. Jim Inhofe, R-Tulsa, announced that Oklahoma City had received a $14.3 million federal grant to build a bus rapid transit line, or BRT. Total cost is $28.8 million, with bond funds, sales tax proceeds and other transit funds making up the difference.

The BRT line, which could be completed by 2023, will run up N Classen Boulevard to Northwest Expressway, and then out past Penn Square to Meridian Avenue. It will have dedicated lanes and priority at traffic signals, shortening travel time for commuters, and will link with the downtown streetcar line. As The Oklahoman’s Steve Lackmeyer noted, the BRT “will hook up all the neighborhoods along the route to employers downtown, several major hospitals, the arena, the convention center and all the venues downtown and up and down the route. Yeah, this is a big deal.”

In recent years, the city has worked to improve traditional bus service — no easy task considering the city covers 621 square miles. Additional investments, redrawn routes and new nighttime buses all have contributed to improved service. Oklahoma City will begin Sunday bus service in late January.

In the future, there could be streetcar service that extends beyond downtown to, perhaps, the northeast side, Capitol Hill and places such as Tinker Air Force Base. The Regional Transit Authority hopes to have commuter rail to Edmond and Norman one day.

But today, the focus is on the MAPS streetcars, and their potential to benefit the city. It’s time to climb aboard and enjoy the ride.