Tulsa Transit

[sgrizzle]

Does anyone use it? I had a project in college to map routes and take them and it was pretty horrific. Some students got stranded. I just looked at the route from my house to work and it would take 3 buses. My bus would also arrive at each transfer point around 1 minute after the next bus leaves causing up to a 45 minute layover. I'm also unsure why they can't have a trip planning program on their site.

[cannon_fodder]

No, I do not.

On several occasions I have thought about trying.  Easy ride to school back in the day, or to the Zoo/Aquarium with the boy, or to a show downtown.  But in all cases the routes or times sucks or I simply couldnt easily figure out how I was going to get where I wanted to be.  For the shows, the buses often stop running before they would be able to take me home.

As I have stated repeatedly.  The assets themselves are the most expensive part of the system.  Learn to use them better.

Friday + Saturday you could do bar shuttles with them.  Going from the central bus station to the Brady, BlueDome, Cherry Street and on to Brookside... back down riverside to the bus station.  Run 1 or 2 buses until 2 am.  Work that in with a few shuttles from hotels or a cab ride home and it could make for some fun times WITHOUT drunk driving dangers.

Game day shuttles to TU and ORU from downtown and/or bar areas.

Most importantly, make the system idiot proof.  I am a mass-transit idiot (read: Midwesterner).  Just show me a picture of where what buses go and when - at every stop.  Put them on a sign post with a nice plexy glass cover.  Put a trip planner on your website to show me how easy it is.

Good mass-transit has to come before the customers.  The cart will not go before the horse.

[booWorld]

I was a frequent rider in the 1990s.  But now I avoid Tulsa Transit because it is too confusing and inconvenient.  The website, the maps, and the timetables are not clear.

For years, the Planning Commission has been on a mission of downzoning older neighborhoods near downtown to incredibly low suburban densities.  Tulsa is sparsely populated and sprawling.  We have miles of streets and utilities which can't be sustained by such a relatively low population.  If the TMAPC could get over their suburban mind set, then perhaps Tulsa could afford to operate a viable mass transit system in the future.  For now, there isn't enough of a demand for public transportation in Tulsa.

[tshane250]

I ride the bus everyday to work.  The bus stop is no more than a two-minute walk from my house and I work only a block from the Denver Avenue Station.  Riding the bus is so much better than driving, IMO.  You can relax, chat with friends, stare out the window, read, etc.  Aside from the occasional late bus in the evening, I cannot complain.

[Steve]

quote:Originally posted by sgrizzle

Does anyone use it? I had a project in college to map routes and take them and it was pretty horrific. Some students got stranded. I just looked at the route from my house to work and it would take 3 buses. My bus would also arrive at each transfer point around 1 minute after the next bus leaves causing up to a 45 minute layover. I'm also unsure why they can't have a trip planning program on their site.

I was a daily rider of the bus when I used to work downtown 1979-1992.  It was cheap, convenient, and my employer sold us subsidized bus passes for $3 for 20 rides.  Can't beat that.  I have not been on a city bus since 1992.

As I have stated before in previous discussions about the bus service, the current "hub and spoke" system of Tulsa bus routes is a disaster.  We should have bus routes serving the major arterial streets, based on the basic grid pattern in Tulsa. An Admirial, Pine, 21st, 31st, Peoria, Lewis, Harvard, etc. bus routes, with busses running every 15 minutes, 7 days a week.  This would minimalize transfers and waiting times.  All these gerrymandering routes trying to serve specific destinations are a waste of the public time and funds.

[izmophonik]

I have ridden the bus a few times.  I had a pleasant experience but I think I am an atypical scenario.  My bus stop is 2 blocks away at Utica Square and drops me off right in front of my work parking lot at DIRECTV.  Very easy 5 minute ride.  I'm sure most experiences aren't quite that nice.

[Steve]

The positive comments here so far have been from persons that use the bus for transportation from home to work and back.  But what about our citizens that rely on public transportation for daily transport, to the doctor, the grocery, church, or whatever.  In that respect, our bus system is extremely poor.  A change to an arterial grid route system is much needed.

[shadows]

Shows you can learn something every day.   Since the Feds started paying on the mass transportation I though those were rolling portable signs that the city leased out to satisfy their revenue shortage.  You mean people actually ride in those sign boards?

[waterboy]

quote:Originally posted by shadows

Shows you can learn something every day.   Since the Feds started paying on the mass transportation I though those were rolling portable signs that the city leased out to satisfy their revenue shortage.  You mean people actually ride in those sign boards?

You seem to have an attitude problem. Is there anything you like about Tulsa?

[booWorld]

There isn't a big demand for public transit in Tulsa.  It's easy to drive to most places, and the cost of gas hasn't risen enough to encourage us to change our habits.

[AMP]

At one time we relied on them to return around 90 employees per day that we had delivered in our vans to various job sites.  Priority was getting the employees to the job to start on time.  The return trip was on their time, and was more flexible.  

At one time the Bus System served to carry domestic workers from the north side of Tulsa to the neighborhoods in south Tulsa.    

Problem I had with the Transit in Tulsa was the routes at that time did not service the Airport or American Airlines business district on Mingo.  They did not service most industrial parks including the Port of Catoosa.  They also did not service many of our large employer's locations.  So for the most part they were not much use for dispatching employees to jobs in those areas.  

Port of Catoosa was one of the most active but also the most difficult locations for us to service from our five Tulsa locations, due to driving distance.  Many people earning in the rage the positions paid at the Port could not afford the mileage expense and fuel it took to drive there from Tulsa.

Shift worker employees would benefit from having Bus service running to the Industrial Parks 20 min prior to shift start time and 15 past the end of the shifts.  

Folks having difficulty hiring may want to take a compass and draw a circle around your location.  Then determine the cost of housing in the areas in the 3 mile radius, if there is any housing.  Draw circles representing 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, up to 15 miles out.  If the cost of housing is far above what the business pays for employees at that location, then determine where the cost of housing applies for the salary range you are offering.  This works both directions as the job applicants use the same process to determine how far they can afford to travel to a job before it begins to cost them more than what they can afford to travel to a company.   Location has been the downfall of many plants and businesses I have seen fail.  They simply could not attract employees at the rate of pay they were competitive with, as they were either located too far from the population area, or in an area where the cost of housing had increased leaving them with too few of job candidates and not on a bus route to ship in labor.  

We found that depending on the amount per hour most people would not travel much more than 10 miles round trip to a job that pays under $8 per hour.  Ones that paid minimum wage the mileage was down around 2 miles out as most those folks either had no car or just one car and their spouse may of driven it, but they would go a longer distance if given a ride, even if it cost $2.00 round trip.

They may have Bus service to the Port, Airport and other Industrial Parks now, been a while since I faced those problems.   Glad I don't have to deal with that anylonger.

[shadows]

Waterboy quoted:
You seem to have an attitude problem. Is there anything you like about Tulsa?
=========================================
Your right I have an attitude problem.  It stems from childhood where people sat on their porches and hollered at their neighbors a block each way while they drank a glass of cold lemonade.  You knew the neighbors and everyone spoke.

Everyone wanted a big city where you cannot sit on the porches or in the yards for fear of drive by shootings.  The doors that we couldn't find a key to we just left it unlocked even when we were gone over the week end.   We didn't read about a murder or rape every day in the two papers.  The trolley cost a dime to ride downtown and the shows charged a dime.  If you were going up to a mile you walked.  Central Park was open ground with large shade trees to sit under.  Schools had racks for bicycles and not parking lots.  Half of the teenagers didn't end up pregnant.  DUI was not  common among the youngest of teenagers.

I hope you like your big city attitude were drugs are exchanged among 5th graders.   Surely you like the high crime rate and locking your doors or getting up in the mornings and checking to see if your car is still in the drive.

I was assigned to Tulsa by birth and I assure you there is very little I like in the big city climate that has been forced upon me. It didn't have to happen this way.

[PonderInc]

In case you missed the article by Bill Cartwright, the general mgr of MTTA...
Public Transit Good for Business

I read this article, but was left hanging when he identified the very real problems associated with public transit in Tulsa...and then offered NO SOLUTIONS!  He basically segues from "here are all the reasons why public transit in Tulsa is broken" to "just take the park and ride express bus from Broken Arrow to downtown Tulsa."  I don't live in Broken Arrow, and I rarely have a reason to visit.  What I do is live, work and play in midtown and downtown Tulsa. Most of my trips are less than 7 miles (now that I live "out in the burbs" at 41st and Harvard, my driving has drastically increased!).

When busses run every 40 minutes, it doesn't help me run errands.  When busses stop running at 7:00 PM, it doesn't help me when I want to go out for dinner and drinks.

I got all exited, hoping he was going to offer some real solutions to making public transit WORK in Tulsa.  What we need are busses that operate on a grid and on a frequent schedule (no longer than 10 minutes between busses in any direction on arterial streets, and using the half-mile streets--like Delaware, Utica, 15th, 36th, 46th streets-- whenever possible as bus routes with equal frequency). A person should know that if they walk down a street, they can jump on a bus at any time along their route.  The problem seems to be O&M funding (there's plenty of federal money for capital purchases, but no local money for operating the busses we buy).  The puzzle is: how do we find the funding to make public transit work?

Here's an excerpt from the article:

"In Tulsa, our bus system is smaller on a per capita basis than virtually all of our peer cities. As an example, in Tulsa we provide our citizens 0.26 annual service hours of public transportation per capita, compared to 0.46 in Kansas City, Mo.; 0.57 in Fort Worth; and 0.75 in Tucson, Ariz.

"This shortage of service manifests itself in the form of lengthy bus waiting times, inadequate nighttime service and no Sunday service. This presents real problems for many who would like to use public transit but find it does not fit well with their situations.

"What I recommend to people who commute between south Tulsa or Broken Arrow and downtown, and what I do myself, is use Tulsa Transit's Express Park-and-Ride option at least once a week."

[Neptune]

quote:Originally posted by booWorld

I was a frequent rider in the 1990s.  But now I avoid Tulsa Transit because it is too confusing and inconvenient.  The website, the maps, and the timetables are not clear.

For years, the Planning Commission has been on a mission of downzoning older neighborhoods near downtown to incredibly low suburban densities.  Tulsa is sparsely populated and sprawling.  We have miles of streets and utilities which can't be sustained by such a relatively low population.  If the TMAPC could get over their suburban mind set, then perhaps Tulsa could afford to operate a viable mass transit system in the future.  For now, there isn't enough of a demand for public transportation in Tulsa.

That's the key.  Density.

The MTTA could improve service in high density areas, then treat low density areas as if they're suburbs.  Anything east of Yale or south of 51st, give them express routes.  Route time on East/West routes would be cut in half on may routes if the bus didn't pass Yale.  North/South routes time could be trimmed by a quarter or more.

How about mini-systems, one bus that only travels Peoria from 31st to 71st, all freakin day?  One that travels only hot spots in downtown and Cherry Street?

Or, if you really have to cover the entire city, make two hubs, throw one down at Woodland Hills Mall.  Where every bus doesn't travel the entire city.  The routes have to be shortened.

MTTA is stretched thin trying to cover as much of the entire city as possible.  That won't work, their service suffers, then goes the ridership.  Condense the system into lines that can provide reliable service.  Lines that can  be constantly valuable to riders.

[Im calling you out]

I save 15 dollars per week using the transit do to the high gas prices that we refuse to do anything about.