My good friend Steve Lackmeyer brings up an interesting topic on his blog over at the NewsOK, the Web site of my former employer, The Oklahoman. The Lackman covers downtown Oklahoma City there, and I can’t think of another person who knows that town better than him.
Don’t believe me? Check out a book he co-wrote (he was supposed to hook me up with an autographed copy, but I’m still holding my breath) about the history of downtown Oklahoma City.
Anyways, back to the topic at hand.
Mass transit.
How can a metropolitan area of some 6 million people — Disclaimer: I don’t know the exact population of Palm, Broward and Miami-Dade counties and I’m too lazy to look it up tonight — have such awful mass transit?
We have Tri-Rail, which is a great service as long as you’re going somewhere along its strict north-south route.
Now if you are going somewhere in Miami, you can catch the dumpy, falling apart Metrorail from Tri-Rail. Metrorail’s dilapidated state reminds me of something you’d see in North Korea, where I think they use old cars built in East Germany decades ago and pass it off as “North Korean technology.”
Bonus: You can take these little mini-cars they call Metromover if you’re going somewhere downtown.
So what the hell is up with mass transit down here? Why am I required to take the bus if I want to go anywhere Tri-Rail doesn’t serve?
Note: Ft. Lauderdale apparently has this in the works. But not everyone is a fan.
“But a $150 million, 2.7-mile project such as this should be the last piece in our sprawling region’s mass transit puzzle, not one of the first.”
Mayo makes some other interesting points.
“Here’s what Broward residents need sooner: Rail transit routes going east-west along the Interstate 595 corridor and north-south on the Florida East Coast railway tracks along Dixie Highway.”
Now I’m not transportation planner, but my question is why a connection between the Tri-Rail station and downtown isn’t top on the list for any project. That’s the No. 1 deterrent that keeps me from riding Tri-Rail.
1 response so far ↓
1 allio12 // May 7, 2008 at 6:10 pm
It’s really unfortunate. I honestly think that it’s because people (and old people, which I’m thinking exist in large numbers down there?) are scared of mass transit. They think they’ll get mugged anytime they wander onto a subway.
Say what you will about Hippieville, Ryan, but I can pull up http://www.nextbus.com, go to the Hop route at Boulder, toggle it to my closest stop a half a block away, see my bus will come in 4 minutes, wander down there, take it up a mile to my office, and get picked up directly outside my office when it’s time to go home. I can bus to the airport, to all of my friend’s houses, to downtown Denver, even to places up in the mountains. Denver and Boulder know how to do public transportation. They got best transportation in North America a couple years back and that’s before they extended their train system, which is still not even where they’d like it to be (for example, there aren’t trains to Boulder or the airports yet — that’s next up).
I am seriously going to miss it because cars make baby Jesus and me violent.
You must log in to post a comment.