Oklahoma City Mayor David Holt’s annual state of the city address exalted investments in infrastructure, MAPS projects, a new arena for the Thunder, the unveiling of a professional soccer club and OKC’s involvement in the 2028 Olympic Games. It’s a place more and more people want to call home.
“We know what happens when you do what we’re doing,” Holt said during the speech. “People will vote with their feet, and they will continue to move to this safe, inclusive, exciting city with plenty of jobs. This population growth is not going to stop.”
That’s all well and good, unless you’re trying to commute to work or school, or need to get around in general without a car.
“If you lived here in 1970 you drove on I-40. You drove on I-35. You drove on I-44. The fundamentals of our city’s transportation network are the same today as they were in 1970,” Holt said. “But within two years there will be twice as many people on those highways than there were in 1970. Have you noticed the difference?”
With options for expanding current highways extremely limited, what can be done? Former Oklahoma Governor Brad Henry thinks he has an answer: ONE Transit. He’s the chairman of its board of directors.
“ONE Transit is the first of its kind regional transportation authorities in Oklahoma. It is a partnership between multiple communities: Oklahoma City, Norman and Edmond,” Henry said.
It’s been around since 2019 and has developed an ambitious plan to update the metro’s public transportation system.
“We really are the last remaining metro area of our size without a working mass transit system. We have bits and pieces, and through the MAPS projects they’ve invested in some of the infrastructure previously, like the streetcars,” Henry said. “But it needs to all be seamlessly connected, and that’s what this regional transportation effort, ONE Transit, is all about.”
That’s what ONE Transit is, but what’s the plan? Jason Ferbrache is the agency’s interim executive director.
“ONE Transit is really trying to get ahead of some of that growth and put in a transit system — a multimodal transportation system — consisting of commuter rail, BRT: enhancing our existing bus service, and then eventually light rail to the airport. So it’s a multimodal, high capacity system that really allows people to have choices about how they move about the region,” Ferbrache said.
The first priority is commuter rail from north to south, Edmond to Norman, using existing rail lines, with stops along the way. Then bus rapid transit to Tinker Air Force Base and eventually the west metro. A plan for light rail to Will Rogers International Airport is further down the line.
None of it is certain. ONE Transit doesn’t have the authority to just build all of this. There will need to be buy-in from city councils and a public vote. It would be funded through federal grants and sales taxes. Then there’s construction and impacts on residents. There are many hurdles. But if all goes to ONE Transit’s plan, Henry said the Oklahoma City metro will experience a public transportation renaissance similar to what happened in Salt Lake City, Utah.
“It was a car-centric community about our size 15 years ago, a very conservative area. And they have embraced mass transit,” Henry said. “Everything from bus to bus rapid transit to light rail to commuter rail, streetcar, modern streetcar. And that’s what we need here in the Oklahoma City metro.”
It won’t come cheap. We’re talking about billions of dollars here over the course of several years. But Henry said investing in public transit will attract much more in private development, and this initiative goes beyond partisan politics.
“I underscore, this is not a partisan issue. This is a quality of life issue. This is economic development. This is jobs. This is mobility,” Henry said.
ONE Transit expects there to be a public vote related to the plan in the communities it would impact sometime in 2027.
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