Session 2, April 13 How To Design A Better Railroad
by Doug Loudenback

The second Let's Talk Transit public meeting began shortly after 6:00 in the Civic Center Music Hall's Hall of Mirrors, a large open space meeting room on the 2nd floor. Unlike the 1st session (which ended sooner than the scheduled time), this session lasted longer than its planned 8:30 p.m. end, not adjourning until shortly after 9:00 p.m., probably because everyone was having so much fun ... either that, or the break-out working groups were just poky in getting their work done. I'll get to that shortly. Around 40-45 or so, including host personnel, were present. This session was intended to allow participants to play-pretend at designing possible routes for the 5-6 (or 2.5-3.0 or something in between) mile downtown transit route. I qualify the mileage length since it was made clear that the total lineal measurement depends upon whether either single or double-track is used during parts or all of the overall system. Single-track is one track shared by cars operating in either direction; double-track includes a separate track for each direction. If single-track construction is used, there need to be periodic passing sidings where a car traveling in one direction can wait while one going in the opposite direction passes.

RESOURCES & MATERIALS. As did the 1st session, this one had a packet of materials for those attending. Some or all of these will probably find their way into the resource pages at www.letstalktransit.com but I'll show most of them below.

Survey 1 Results

Let's Talk Transit is taking online surveys as one means of getting the public's input (click that link to see and/or take Survey 2, now in progress). Survey 1 (now closed) asked two questions:

1. Looking at the Downtown Oklahoma City map, what high priority destinations would you recommend the modern streetcar travel by?
2. When planning a modern streetcar route it's important to consider what destinations would best serve as "anchors," or destinations that draw large amounts of people and/or are frequented often. From the list of destinations you provided in Q1.,which do you feel would best serve as anchors in Downtown Oklahoma City?

Before it closed, 265 people completed Survey 1 and the results are shown below – click either image below for a readable view.

Question 1

Question 2

 

Read the above results for more detail, but the top 6 for each survey question are shown below:

Question 1 High Priority Destinations			Question 2 Anchor Destinations
1.  Arts District	11.884%		1.  Bricktown	20.751%
2.  Bricktown	11.318%		2.  Ford Center	12.253%
3.  Ford Center	9.458%		3.  Bricktown Ballpark/CC Event	9.289%
4.  OKC National Memorial	7.033%		4.  Arts District	9.091%
5.  Bricktown Ballpark/CC Event	5.982%		5.  OKC National Memorial	5.731%
6.  OHC	5.901%		6.  OHC	5.138%

The survey results were used by staffers to identify various types of locations in the working-group maps which are observed in several of the photos, to be presented shortly. Some expressed hope that the survey would be re-presented to obtain a larger number of responses but, in this instance, a cutoff needed to be used so that staffers could prepare for Session 2.

Area Definition. The package included a general map showing the area being considered for the streetcars. Click the image for a larger view.

Questions & Answers From 1st Session. During the 1st session, participants wrote questions on cards provided and most of them were verbally answered by one of the presenters. However, program staff did a great job of reducing all of the 38 questions and answers to written form, including those not gotten to in the 1st session. The names of both the person asking and answering are provided. My guess is that these will eventual appear in the Questions & Answers area of the Let's Talk Transit website, but that's just a guess. In the meantime, I've scanned the 4-page handout and you can read and/or save it here.

 

THE MEETING

It took me a bit of time to locate the Hall of Mirrors, never having been there before. Basically, it is a ballroom sized room with some pretty deco decor with a small stage at the south end. The pair of images below shows some of what I observed ... click on images for larger views.

Better Than Deco Kristy Yeager & Kinsey Crocker

Looking Through West Windows The photo doesn't the room justice

Jennifer Eve, moderator, made a few comments followed by a series of four presentations designed to set the background. Rick Cain, director of COTPA, summarized what occurred at the last meeting. Randy Entz and A.J. Kirkpatrick with the Oklahoma City City Planning Department then got into was was called "Downtown Density Realities" in the agenda, Randy mainly introducing A.J. who was the main presenter. A.J. described changes in the past 10 years, 2000-2010: housing changes (rental - below 800 to above 1,800; owned - 600 to above 1,400); hotel rooms (400 to above 1,600); concentration of employers and number of employees; and maybe other stuff that I missed.

Randy Entz

A.J. Kirpatrick

Where is all this stuff leading to — competent and skilled railroad designers which we all were undoubtedly were — "What's it all about, Alfie?" That's where Mike McAnelly of Jacobs Engineering (I'll call him the "Killer Bee" — this guy clearly knows his stuff) came in. By this point, if we (the wannabe rail-line-locater-experts) weren't already given more information than we could absorb in a time-span of 20 minutes or so, we would soon know how little we actually knew about the process of selecting of a preferred alignment of a rather limited (5-6 miles single-track, 2.5-3 miles double-tracked) downtown streetcar path. Now, I mean no slight to McAnelly by saying this — he never talked down to us and put stuff in street-speech that was easy to understand and what he said was most helpful. But ... but ... but ... in just a few minutes time we were going to assimilate everything we'd heard and then be let loose with maps and magic markers to come up with plans in the space of an hour or so's time? OK, OK, maybe I'm slower than most of the attendees — it's fair to say that's a given. I listened as McAnelly presented slides and described:

Streetcar Guiding Principles

• alignment considerations
• physical constraints
• patterns of economic development along "nodes" (I presume that means "stops"), varying depending upon whether single or double-track was employed
• peer city comparisons; and a summary of technical methodology.

One thing he said that I'll pass along has to do with Bricktown. I recall hearing at the 1st session that the street underpasses under the Santa Fe tracks have less clearance than most streetcars require ... "How is that going to be solved," I wondered, "we sure as heck cannot change the elevation of the Santa Fe track." But McAnelly made it sound so simple ... lower the bed for the streetcar, i.e., make the road go "down!" I made a note to slap myself on the back of my head when no one was looking.

As he was speaking, I panned back and saw something that caught my eye ...

 
What would Sally Kern say?

 

McAnelly's last slide summarized the "Technical Methodology" for finally arriving at selection of a preferred alignment:

1. Identification of destinations and route termini
2. Define physical constraints
3. Locate bus & rail connection possibilities
4. Review land use
5. Locate redevelopment and/or development potentials
6. Assess marketing [something? - my notes are obtuse]
7. [Missed this one altogether]
8. Delineate alignment options
9. Evaluate pedestrian and bicycle options
10. Assess ability to create public/private partnerships
11. Identify place making assets
12. Evaluate alternatives
13. Select preferred alignment

I may have gotten some of the above slightly wrong, but what I've said is pretty close to the mark. Youza! After hearing all these guys, for those of us who weren't experts at 5:59 p.m., we surely must be experts by now! At this point, the meeting broke into working groups. Each working group had a particular element to focus upon, e.g., residential or some other category. The goal of each group was to arrive at and then present to the group one or more alternatives within its assigned category, and this is where the fun began.

 

WORKING GROUPS

Armed with all of the above, participants broke into six working groups. Some were assigned one type of consideration (e.g., residential) or another. Each group had a moderator — for example, mine was Randy Entz with the city planning department — but the moderators were there to keep the rest of us on track and not to make route suggestions. At one point, I said to Randy, "You guys have surely come up with your own models. Can you give us a clue?" He said, "Yes," but declined to reveal planning department ideas, saying (to the effect), "that's not what these sessions are about." I asked him, "Have you ever seen a hub-spoke model like Mayor Cornett said he preferred during the MAPS 3 campaign," and he said, "No." The following pictures show the working groups as they came up with the routes which related to their assigned categories. Click on an image for a larger view.

The last element of the evening was a brief presentation of their work product by each group, as shown below. Click on images for larger views.

City personnel intend to take these maps and create overlays to be presented at a future session, which will be good to see similarities and differences in what each of the six working groups came up with. That will be interesting to see.

 

EVALUATION

One cannot but be seriously impressed with the amount of time, work, and money that city personnel put into making this a successful meeting — everything from handouts to presentations to organization of the working groups was exceptionally well thought through and executed. For example, at each table, large demographic maps were present to use as resources to identify where people worked and resided and how many, location of hotels, etc. One such demographic map is shown below. Click for a larger image.

Plus, it was great to meet and talk with others who are interested in this process and want it to succeed. The promised public participation was abundantly present in Session 2.

Postscript

One of my table's participants, Walter Jenny, and I were talking and he mentioned something about the location of the old Oklahoma Railway Co. lines in downtown — wouldn't that be good to see? He was absolutely correct. So, here you are, a crop of the trolley map from When Oklahoma Took the Trolley by Allison Chandler and Stephen D. Maguire (Interurbans 1980). I've included the area north of 13th Street up to 23rd, to give a better idea of that area, too. Click on the image for a larger view.