Posted on September 17 at 1:15 a.m.Suggest removal

Yep. Amtrak is a "federally funded sham" that couldn't, in its worst decade, rack up the "$40 billion unfunded maintenance requirement" faced on its roads by just the state of Oklahoma by 2001 (up from "$11 billion" in 1996...). No telling what that maintenance deficit totals today. ODOT, sure enough, ain't sayin'. We do know that the actual cost of its 4-mile relocation of I-40 -- directly, deliberately and preemptively through the magnificent OKC Union Station rail yard near downtown Oklahoma City -- was sold as a "$236 million" project -- but actual cost-to-date so far is said to exceed $900 million on its way well-past $1 billion. That's four miles of road (again). That billion dollars might have transformed the 12-track-wide, 8-block-long Union Station yard into the best transit center in the West -- serving the entire state. And as to "uninformed reporters and citizen commentators," ask the vaunted but apparently mythological mirage calling itself "THE HEARTLAND FLYER MARKETING COALTION" (yep -- that'd be "heartlandflyer.com") who its "grassroots" spokespeople are -- and the webmaster will send you to ODOT's Joe Kyle -- who ain't "grassroots." Turns out HFMC was never anything but an astroturf stalking horse set up by ODOT to crowd the real grassroots activists who brought passenger trains back to Oklahoma out of the press. And a righteous penalty for such a cold, cynical betrayal of the public trust would be....?

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Posted on September 14 at 4:02 p.m.Suggest removal

It's important to understand that THE FLYER was supposed to be a Kansas City-to-Ft. Worth service supported by revenue from daily mail and express freight contracts. It didn't happen that way, however, because ODOT, dominated by the highway lobby, didn't want it to happen. Amtrak has pretty much always been a tool ill-suited to its assigned job -- and to make certain it stayed that way, executives and managers with serious ideas to make it what it should always have been are typically driven away. Next time you talk to former Oklahoma US Senator David L. Boren -- ask him what happened to the 90 mph, Chicago-to-Houston LONE STAR, Oklahoma's first Amtrak service. I'll guarantee you -- he knows exactly what happened to it.

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Posted on February 22 at 11:57 a.m.Suggest removal

Yes, yes -- tell us all about the "freedom" of the automobile.

The reality? Real freedom means CHOICE. Oklahomans have NO CHOICE but to sink more than most can afford into keeping up automobiles. We're "free" to pay as much for a car as we once did for a house. "Free" to endlessly buy oil, gas, tires, insurance (it's "the law," you know...). "Free" to walk home when we have to leave the car at the shop. "Free" to stand by the road in the dark when that expensive car quits because a $50 component failed.

We're "free" to put our lives in the hands of everybody else on the road every time we venture out. "Free" to be big, juicy liability targets. "Free" to be absolutely perfect every time we get behind the wheel -- and to pray the driver of every car coming near us is perfect, too. 43,000 Americans die and hundreds of thousands are injured, many permanently, every year in auto accidents, the number one cause of "morbidity and mortality" among young Americans.

(Japanese bullet trains have moved rider numbers equivalent to half-the-population-of-the-world at speeds over 160 mph since 1964 without a single passenger fatality...)

Funny, these claims of "the freedom of the automobile" sound just like the arguments of smarmy Heritage Foundation spokesman Ernest J. Istook -- who funded aggressive rail transit development for his pals in Utah and Arizona as 5th District Oklahoma congressman even as he simultanteously funded the destruction of OKC Union Station's magnificent rail yard in OKC. (Ever hear that "power corrupts?" Find the proof in any government in Oklahoma...)

Real freedom is CHOICE. Having no choice, no competition, no backup plan, no strategic redundancy in our basic transportation system is not "freedom." It's a path to domination by corporate monopolies, and, ultimately, to national suicide.

TOM ELMORE, OU '78
gtelmore@aol.com

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Posted on February 20 at 10:31 p.m.Suggest removal

So this is what the camera/sensor array masts placed along the metro's limited access highways are supposed to be for? No chance at all that if they can track "uninsured motorists," they can track all the rest of us, as well?

Oklahomans have no alternative to automobiles and highways -- by clear complicity of our political leadership with the special interests who benefit by this lack of choice. So since we all must accept being herded onto the state's potholed roadways and shaky bridges, they figure we'll also have no choice in getting our daily behavior monitored?

By the way -- in this era of budgetary melt-down, who paid for all this undoubtedly expensive roadside telemetry? Isn't ODOT and the National Highway Trust Fund supposed to be "broke?"

Where did the funding come from? Who gave the authority for such technology to be funded and deployed? Did any elected official granted such authority by the people and the constitution explain in advance of the erection of these potentially intrusive machines what they were for and just how far into our lives they could look? Does the equipment already in place work -- or not? If so, who's using it to intrude into our personal business right now?

It wouldn't hurt Oklahomans -- even the young and naive -- to wise up at least a little. This is a very, very, very bad idea that will nearly inevitably come back to haunt all of us.

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Posted on February 19 at 2:01 p.m.Suggest removal

In 1979, current OU president David L. Boren was Oklahoma's junior US senator. He along with "Panama Henry" Bellmon ditched our original Amtrak service, the 90 mph Chicago-to-Houston LONE STAR, direct heir of the Santa Fe's fabled TEXAS CHIEF.

Boren has always run interference for the Oklahoma highway lobby. Most recently, he refused to raise a hand to stop the highway-lobby puppets at ODOT from destroying Oklahoma City Union Station's magnificent rail yard (300 SW 7th), center of the state's rail system, to make way for a four mile relocation of I-40.

Today, ODOT contractors are wrecking the beautiful S. Robinson Avenue railway underpass, a facility lovingly hand-built by craftsmen of our great-grandparents' generation. As a substitute, ODOT has set the former Frisco Railway mainline long overpassing arterial streets S. Robinson and S. Walker on exclusively at-grade further south on the same, key streets. Of course, this mainly affects the population of Capitol Hill, a largely minority district. After 80 years of carefree passage on these streets, commuters and emergency responders will now face the same "will I have to wait for the train" questions that now confront many in Norman.

This is ODOT's idea of "improvement." This is how they are spending public transportation dollars.

The highway lobby controls ODOT. If ODOT was really interested in development of passenger rail, it would have carefully preserved OKC Union Station. It also would have allowed the original business plan for THE HEARTLAND FLYER, daily Kansas City-to-Ft. Worth service via OKC, costs covered by First Class Mail transport -- instead of deliberately stubbing the train's schedule at OKC and then eating up the $23 million startup fund that accompanied it to Oklahoma in less than four years.

ODOT spokeswoman Brenda Perry never asks whether any given highway project can "ever break even." She gets her paycheck for mouthing the deceptive words given to her by her bosses -- words meant to darken the way of Oklahoma taxpayers, not enlighten it.

Worse yet, both ODOT and the state highway lobby are apparently deeply entangled with the Engineering schools and administrations at OU and OSU -- mutually supporting each other in beating Oklahomans out of the intelligent use of their 866-mile, state-owned rail network and the state's commercially-owned rail lines.

A word on behalf of OKC Union Station from either David Boren or Burns Hargis might have helped. Both knew the situation. Both understood Union Station's importance. Both kept their silence.

Is this the work of leadership and institutions that are really interested in better transportation for Oklahoma?

Think about it.

TOM ELMORE, OU '78
gtelmore@aol.com

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