Downtown parking

[AquaMan]

Apparently, I have math dyslexia - it is 196 tickets.

Here is an interesting article that says OKC-Ft. Worth route lost $43 per rider in 2012.  Not sure how they messure "rider", but it is likely by one-way, not round trip.  Even so, this made Heatland Flyer one of Armtrak's more "successful" routes.

http://newsok.com/heartland-flyer-loses-more-than-43-per-rider-in-2012-report-finds/article/3760428

Hey, Amtrak isn't the only mode of travel subsidized. Do your math on highway spending, particularly Turnpikes and airports. They are losers as well.

[heironymouspasparagus]

Hey, Amtrak isn't the only mode of travel subsidized. Do your math on highway spending, particularly Turnpikes and airports. They are losers as well.

Not to mention oil companies and every bite everyone eats.  To the tune of hundreds of billions per year.


There are a lot of places that feed from the trough...I have ranted here about looking at the big chunks first, then we don't even have to worry about the small pieces - the small savings mostly aren't worth the effort expended to ferret them out and try to eliminate them.

[Weatherdemon]

Not as sweet as OKC folk taking the train to Tulsa, walking to the BOK center and catching the train back to OKC

LOL, indeed!

[nathanm]

The Heartland Flyer is currently beings subsidized with $4 million per year (paid evenly between Oklahoma and Texas) and offers only 1 round trip per day.  Does anyone know what the ridership numbers are currently/historically?  $2 billion on a single transportation project would be huge, and that is money that then cannot be spent on anything else.
[...]
It's easy to poke fun of us Okies as unwilling to give up our cars for mass transit and trains, but you cannot expect us to make an irrational choice of using transportation that is slower, more costly, provides less flexibility, requires renting a car on one end of the trip, or some other inconvenience.

If you assume the only possible train is the worst possible train, of course it would make no sense and nobody would ride it. Given ambition, and $2 billion, which is the estimated cost of fully high speed rail, not the slow speed using the existing route as-is, we could have a train with times equal to or better than the Turnpike. As far as stops go, there is nothing that says we can't run both express and local trains. Or we could just play dumb, in which case we're wasting money no matter what we do because we're not spending it wisely.

We're paying about 17 cents per passenger mile for a not-very-good train. Granted, we pay about 5c per vehicle mile for road vehicles, but the total direct expenditure is over a thousand times greater and results in hundreds of deaths, thousands of injuries, and at least another billion dollars a year in property damage and medical bills due to car crashes, none of which is included in that figure. Funny how we expect trains to pay their own way, but we spend about twice what we bring in with taxes and user fees on cars (ignoring the crash costs). Accounting for that brings it closer to 10c per vehicle mile, if not a bit higher.

[rebound]

I had a conference in Philly a couple of weeks ago, and was scheduled to fly into PHL through DFW.  Weather shut down PHL mid-trip, and the closest I could get to was Kennedy in NY.  My option from there was to rent a car or take the train.  In part due to the discussions here, and because I'd never ridden a commuter train before, I thought I'd give it a shot.

I took the airport train to the NY subway, and then the subway to the train station.  (The NY subway was "interesting", but no real issues and there was a solid mix of riders.)  I have to say that I was very impressed by the AMTRAK train from NY to Philly.  The ticketing and boarding were similar to an airport, with the exception of none of the intrusive security screening.  Once on the train (which was about an hour trip)  the seating was very airplane-like, it was clean, there was electricity and a WiFi connection, and food for sale if you wanted it.  I had a very productive hour clearing out emails and doing a couple of phone calls while in-route.  Once in Philly, I caught a cab for the final leg to the conference, but I found out later that I could easily made it an all-train trip by jumping on the subway there and getting off adjacent to the conference hotel.

In discussions with some my co-workers over there, many of them have passes for AMTRAK and ride it several times a week rather than drive.  I realize we're a long way off from having an infrastructure like the do on the East coast, but I do think that the market is there if we were to get serious about it.

[heironymouspasparagus]

  the seating was very airplane-like, it was clean, there was electricity and a WiFi connection, and food for sale if you wanted it. 

Haven't ridden main Amtrak yet, but Heartland Flyer has about 2 feet of space beyond where my feet land on the floor!!  Amazing!!  And nice.

[Townsend]

What do you think of the proposed ordinance designed to encourage structured parking and reuse of existing buildings in Downtown Tulsa?

City staff has drafted an ordinance to address the City Council's concern about demolition of buildings and the proliferation of surface parking lots in the part of Downtown Tulsa commonly referred to as the IDL, or the Inner Dispersal Loop. This move prompted the following article from Streetsblog.

Building on input received from Feedback about the topic entitled 'Downtown Buildings and Parking Policy: Past, Present, Future?', comments collected from this topic will be considered during the August 21st work session of the Tulsa Metropolitan Area Planning Commission.

On the previous topic, 79 of 97 participants wanted to see more buildings and fewer surface parking lots, no one wanted to see more parking lots and 18 people wanted to see something else.

The draft ordinance provides for issuance of a demolition permit inside the IDL only when: the building poses a public health or safety risk; a zoning clearance permit and building permit for the proposed use of the property has already been approved; the Board of Adjustment has conducted a public hearing and determines the proposed demolition to be appropriate based upon review criteria contained within the ordinance. Click here for the full draft ordinance.

PLANiTULSA and the Downtown Area Master Plan recognize that losing existing structures for the creation of additional parking lots is detrimental to a vital, thriving downtown. A moratorium is currently in place to prevent the teardown of downtown structures, pending development of a longer-term solution.

To retain the integrity of a pedestrian-friendly, active downtown, structured parking is preferred. And it represents a more efficient, economical and sustainable way to utilize limited downtown property. The proposed ordinance establishes structured parking as a permitted use by right within the IDL. It continues to permit surface parking as an on-site accessory use and allows an applicant to request a Special Exception (to be considered by the Board of Adjustment in a public hearing) for approval of surface parking as a principal or off-site accessory use.

Tell us what you think about the proposed ordinance by reviewing it and then by clicking on Post below to have your say.

Post your thoughts here:

http://www.peakdemocracy.com/portals/121/Forum_355/Issue_1429

[Weatherdemon]

I just noticed today that the north garage that signs point everyone too for Brady parking has a nice red and white sign up at the west entrance they direct every to saying their hours of operation are 5AM - 9PM.

No wonder it's not utilized as much in the evening as I thought it would be.