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Why streetcars survived in Boston
It's a commonplace sentiment among fans of streetcars that a cabal of car and tire manufacturers bought out city streetcar systems one by one and shut them down, replacing the wonderful old PCC trolley cars with diesel-belching buses. In reality, there were many factors undermining the popularity and financial feasibility...
The food truck approach to public transit
Many of my hipster urbanist friends are very fond of food trucks. Food trucks today offer a wide variety of cuisines and a wide range of sophistication and price. The mobility of the kitchen allows the restaurant to go where the customer is. Better food can be offered for...
My attempted Tulsa Transit bus ride
It was a Saturday morning, and I wasn't in a hurry. I needed to drop off a rental car at the Avis location downtown then pick up my car that had been in the shop while I was out of town. I had already paid the repair bill and had...
Cheaper to buy all the riders a Prius?
Via Gerard Vanderleun, I found a provocative blog entry on the cost of light rail and other forms of fixed-route mass transit: When Phoenix was building its light rail system, I made the following two-part bet: I could take all the money spent on construction and easily buy a Prius...
My mayoral manifesto
An edited version of this column appeared in the April 1, 2009, issue of Urban Tulsa Weekly. The published version is no longer available online. Posted online June 15, 2016. Election Day 2009 is a mere seven months away, and a credible opponent to Mayor Kathy Taylor's bid for re-election...
More bridges to nowhere
I've commented on the pointlessness of the 41st Street and 61st Street pedestrian-only bridges, which are part of the sales tax package Tulsa County residents will be voting on October 9, but which are not part of the Arkansas River Master Corridor Plan. The 41st Street pedestrian-only bridge would in...
Free public transit!
Not "free" the adjective, but "free" the imperative verb. America's most public-transit-dependent city has been hit with a strike of public transit workers, and the solution is to liberate public transit from the state-owned monopoly that controls it. Karol at Alarming News sees a silver lining in the cloud of...
Growing Up With Tulsa
Came across this fascinating book online. Written in 1986 by a woman born in Tulsa in 1900, she writes about everyday life as she experienced it -- work, shopping, household chores, travel. It's called Growing Up with Tulsa, by Blanche Opal Kern Schad. Mrs. Schad's family came to Tulsa in...
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