The meetings are underway and ground work laid out for everyone to participate in Let’s Talk Transit, which is a quite interesting way for the City of Oklahoma City to engage the public in discussions surrounding transit in the downtown area.

During the first meeting held at City Hall at 11:30 a.m. on Monday, March 29 Jennifer Eve, Rick Cain, Mike McAnelly and Kristy Yager outlined the objectives of the meeting, which were to:

1. define the modern streetcar to the community
2. explain how the destinations and stops will be determined. (hint: by the community)
3. gather input and feedback from the community.

As we moved through the meeting, it became apparent I was unfamiliar with the differences between a streetcar and a light-rail system.To me it seemed like an argument in semantics, but what I learned from themeeting is that a street car is slower, stops more frequently and is designed to work well in areas with a lot of congestion. A light-rail system is designed for rapid transit over a greater distance; say from Edmond,Yukon, Mooreor Mid-Del to downtown. Who knew? Well apparently McAnelly did.

The presenters spent quite a bit of time outlining the modern streetcar verses other modes of transportation such as: buses, which are louder and less green; and rubber-tired vehicles, which don’t portray permanency. Personally I’m not a fan of the rubber-tired vehicles because we currently have those modes of transportation and it’s safe to agree that the current system is not filling our needs as a city.

Where will the street cars stop? According to Cain and McAnelly they will stop every three of four blocks, and through the Let’s Talk Transit meetings the location of the stops will be determined from input by the public.

Cool! I want to stop in front of my office and my parking garage. Wait, that won’t make sense because adjacent to my office building is amore prominent building containing more businesses and people and my garage isvery close to the state #1 tourist attraction. I can see how this discussion of stops and destinations will be a slippery slope.

Robert, a three-year-old boy, asked my favorite question during the meeting, “Can the train come to my house?” Honest question. The reality is stopping at every house isn’t feasible and my guess is Robert and his father live outside the downtown area. Still, kudos for asking the question little Robert.

If the modern streetcar is the decided mode of transportation, I’ve got a beef – overhead power lines. I’m just not a fan of a web or high-voltage (750 volts of DC power to be exact) wires strewn around downtown. Although I’m not a fan of the wires, I’m very interested in the studies showing an increase in retail and housing along the route of permanent steel tracks. I’ll have to dig more into those studies.

On the topic of overhead wires, we found out there’s a possibility of incorporating artwork concerning the poles that suspend thewires. Pole art, interesting. You can bet this will be a topic of lengthy discussion.

This meeting was a great start to the conversation of Let’sTalk Transit. I’m eager to attend the following meetings since each will have a different agenda with different objectives. If you want input, show up to the meetings or follow my live tweets during the meetings that I attend. I’ll tweet using the hash tag #letstalktransit.