This is Transit Unplugged.

I'm Paul Comfort, and today we take a look into the political side of public

transportation with Mayor David Holt, who is the mayor of Oklahoma City,

Oklahoma, the capital city of the State of Oklahoma here in the United States.

Mayor Holt is known as a pro transit mayor, and he talks about the 20 year

plan that he is helping to implement as a kind of the second mayor in a row to be

focused on this to implement those plans.

They have a bus service, paratransit, a streetcar that was started under the

last term, and now a bus rapid transit system, which just opened up recently, and

they're moving toward additional lines.

And they've just voted to move into a regional transportation authority

that will eventually fund and build and operate a light rail line.

He's a very pragmatic politician in a nonpartisan city, although

he is a registered Republican.

And we talk about all that on this episode, and show you about what it's like

from a mayor's perspective to implement and promote public transportation and

how it integrates into the overall city services and the overall city plan,

to improve the city infrastructure.

I think you'll find it a fascinating conversation with

Mayor David Holt of Oklahoma City.

Now let's join the conversation.

David Holt, mayor of Oklahoma City.

Thank you so much for being our guest today on Transit Unplugged.

Well, thank you.

Thanks for having me, Paul.

Yeah, excited.

I had a mutual friend who told me about you and the great work

you're doing there in Oklahoma when it comes to public transit.

And also, your upcoming role very excited for you.

You're the new, chair of the, or the president, I guess, of the U.

S.

Conference of Mayors next year.

Very exciting, Mayor.

Yes, well, thank you.

It's my honor to be mayor, and I've always been a fan of the U.

S.

Conference of Mayors.

Great platform for urban issues, and yeah, I'll begin serving as president

of that organization in June of 25.

It's exciting.

Well, let's talk about a few things today.

I want to dive into your city, the public transit system, and all

the great plans you have for it.

So, tell us some about Oklahoma City itself.

Yeah, well, for your, for your listeners who, understandably may

not be experts on Oklahoma City, and I know you've got listeners all around the

world, to give a little bit of context, both maybe from a population and geography

standpoint, and geography matters a lot in public transit conversations.

Yeah.

And I'll expand on that in a moment.

But, We're the 20th largest city by population.

I mean, there's more people and that sometimes surprises people, but I

mean, there's more people living in the city limits of Oklahoma City

than live in the city limits of Atlanta and Miami and Washington, D.

C.

and Nashville and so on and so on.

We have 700, 000 residents in the city limits.

Now, if you talk about, like, the market , or the metropolitan statistical

area, or the MSA, as we call it here in the United States we fall a

little bit farther down the rankings.

Obviously, that's going to be, you know, that's going to include

our suburbs and that's about 1.

5Million people in total.

And there we rank about 40nd but look, when you're mayor, you're

only the mayor of the city.

You're not the mayor of the suburbs.

So, you know, I always think, That it is certainly consequential in

my life that when I go to a U.

S.

conference of mayors meeting, there's only 19 people who have

more constituents than I do.

Now, here's though, probably the factor that in many ways is more

relevant to this conversation.

And let me shift to giving people a sense of our geography.

So great.

And in that sense, we are very, very unique.

We are 1 of really, I think only 3 American cities.

That have high population and are spread out over more than 600 square

miles and the other 2 that come to mind are Houston and Jacksonville.

We're 620 square miles and to give that, like.

I could make comparisons all day, but 1 easy 1 is like, you know, Boston,

I think is like, 70 square miles.

I mean, there's a lot of there's a lot of American cities, especially more on

the Eastern half of the United States.

That are just a fraction of our size.

We, like many states in the Southwest, you know, think about, like, Phoenix

and Dallas and Los Angeles, you know, the farther West you went, the

closer you were to your, you know, to the invention of the automobile.

Right?

And so most of these cities.

West of the Mississippi in the United States.

Were built in a different era, right?

They were built and populated around the automobile and that's just

obviously cities in the northeast of the United States were built

around horse and buggy, you know, and so it's just a different style.

Obviously that has major consequences for your ability to produce public

transit, because it's a lot more expensive in a 620 square mile city

to build and operate public transit than it is in a 70 square mile city.

And so that certainly has had consequences to our public transit

as it has for for many westerly American cities through the years.

So, in keeping with probably a lot of cities like ours, west of the

Mississippi, we really had treated public transit like an afterthought for

a very long time because of our size.

We were really built around the automobile and our emphasis in our investments

as a city had been on that on streets.

And on automobile traffic really for our entire history until very

recently, but I'll probably stop there.

But I just think that that you're probably the most important

takeaway for your visitor.

Your listeners was to understand, you know, like, how many people

are here and how big are we?

Because those are 2 key factors for a public transit conversation.

Well, good.

Well, let's flip over then to your public transit.

Your system's called Embark.

part of a, a larger, it's a city department, right?

Tell us about the department it's in and some of the

services you all operate there.

Right.

Our public transit, really for our whole region to this point, is has been really

a city department of the city of Oklahoma City, and that has stood in contrast,

maybe to transit systems in more in more Northeastern cities where this transit

system is more a factor in people's daily lives and is often maybe its own

government sort of outside of the city government in many cases, because it

needs to be sort of a collection of city governments, maybe even a collection of

different states in some cases, right?

But here in Oklahoma City, because of our size, most of our transit just

needs to occur in our city limits . And what transit has historically occurred

outside of our city limits has still been operated by us, but sort of, maybe under

a contract with another city or something.

And so, yes, our authority is known as COTPA the Central Oklahoma

Transportation and Parking Authority.

It also runs the parking garages in downtown Oklahoma City.

And then the sort of the brand name that is on the buses is Embark, and that's

sort of the, that's sort of the way that it's, it's more publicly known.

We have for half a century and a lot has changed in the last 10 years.

And I'll kind of get to that.

But, but for half a century, you know, we were really just a bus system and

quite frankly, a bus system that was had really slow, you know, pick up times.

I mean, you're going to wait 30, 45 minutes an hour.

Between pickups, really only covered a small portion of the populated

part of our city and an even smaller portion of the entire city.

You know, if you lived outside of kind of the core, you may, you may likely

have no service at all, or you, you had to walk a couple of miles or something.

If you didn't have another method of getting to the bus stop.

For all of these reasons, you know, the, the service historically was really

for people who had no other option.

It was really a service of last resort.

It was not something.

that would attract a lot of choice riders in the vernacular of transit, right?

So, that's the state of affairs from really the end of private streetcars

till about 10 or 15 years ago, right?

About a half century of history, where, where the city was.

Ultra focus on automobile traffic and investing in ways to make

automobile traffic flow freely.

And, almost, you know, transit was just considered such an afterthought

from a funding perspective, from a vision perspective.

It wasn't something that city leaders even really talked about . It just, it was

kind of there as sort of a nod towards.

Well, I guess we have to have something for people who can't afford cars, but it

will be in many ways, the bare minimum.

Well, about 15, 20 years ago, I would say that mentality started to shift.

You know, I think.

You had rising generations that were just more interested in public

transit and thought of thought of it as something they might like to do,

even though they still own a car.

Would like to have some options.

and I think city leaders also recognized that, that we had a problem.

It was a good problem, but we were growing, you know, from

a population perspective.

we had separately from from the transit conversation.

Had started investing in ourselves in 1993 with the passage of an initiative known as

maps metropolitan area projects and maps now is on its 4th iteration since 1993.

But each step along the way, we've made some pretty big

investments in our quality of life.

It's a well known brand name here in Oklahoma City, and it's

been very successful and it, it led to getting an NBA team.

It's led to all of this.

Improvement in in, Oklahoma City's quality of life, which has led to a

dramatic improvement in desirability, which is led not surprisingly

to the ultimate validation for a city, which is population growth.

And so, you know, when I came into the world, we were

maybe the 37th largest city.

Now we're the 20th largest city.

you know, to make that kind of movement is actually relatively rare in American life.

You know, cities generally have kind of established themselves,

but we're 1 of those cities.

It's been on the rise this last quarter century.

Well, all of this means, of course, that, you know, it's a little more traffic.

It's a little more crowded and you can start to anticipate a world where.

You're going to need other options and the thing about transit is I'm

sure your listeners know better than anybody is it's a really

expensive and complicated endeavor.

To build a transit system and you can't just wake up on the morning

that you've got gridlock and decide I would like to have a fully, you

know, fully formed light rail system.

I mean, you're, if you do that, you are a quarter century away from that moment.

So, you better get started a little bit before you're in a crisis.

And, and so my predecessor, Mayor Cornett, presided over, I think that

first shift in, in thought about this and the first movement towards, some real

planning and some regional partnerships.

So.

about gosh, it's almost 20 years ago now.

Our city adopted what they called the fixed guideway study, which, of course,

transit is really good at putting.

you know, things into technical terms that no lay people can understand, you

know, I try to so I try to try to do my best to translate it, you know, but it

was so a fixed guideway study in our case.

It's really just a plan for what transit might look like.

in the decades ahead, and it had four components.

1 was simply better bus service, you know, just like more lines, more frequency.

The 2nd was bus, rapid transit, which at the time of this adoption, 20 years ago,

we didn't have any bus, rapid transit.

I think of bus rapid transit as sort of a compromise.

It's a cheaper way to provide the same kind of service that you get in a rail

based transit, you know, but it's.

It's highly frequent and it kind of has a different feel, you know, it feels like

something you'd want to ride, not that you would have to ride, you know, the 3rd

element of our fixed guideway study was a downtown streetcar to circulate people

as we bring them downtown without a car.

And then the 4th element was another way that would another method

that would bring them downtown.

In addition to bus, rapid transit and buses, and that

would be some sort of light rail.

but obviously limited, you know, trying to find, like, the high population corridors

where it would really make sense.

And we have 2 major suburbs 1 to the North and 1 to the South, Edmond and Norman.

And the thought has always been, if we could just have a straight line

from Edmond to Norman right through downtown Oklahoma City with a light rail

line, that would be highly utilized.

That would be highly useful.

So those 4 elements is what are what we developed 20 years ago.

And we've really just been working that plan ever since.

I mean, it's been quite methodical and we haven't really deviated

from it and it takes a lot of time.

as you can imagine, but every time we've sort of had a funding method

come along that could give us.

An opportunity to check another box on that plan.

We've utilized it.

So in 2009, we had maps 3.

so I mentioned the maps series of initiatives.

Well, they're kind of like a movie series.

Now we sort of number them like sequels.

And so maps 3, it was kind of perfect to put in a downtown streetcar.

Now, the downtown streetcar, in my view, is really part of a comprehensive system,

and it'll make the most sense when all these other elements are in place.

And you've got locals coming to downtown who don't have a car and therefore

need a little bit of a circulator.

But it fit, financially, with sort of the room we had in MAPS 3.

so we went ahead and did it and it opened in 2018.

then somewhere around that time period, we secured a grant.

For, for bus rap for our first bus rapid transit line.

This was a federal grant paired with some local match.

And that took a few years to implement and so we just opened that a few months

ago and it goes to the Northwest and in our, of our 4 quadrants, it's going, it's

kind of serving 1 of those quadrants.

and then we've just methodically improved bus service as opportunities

to presented themselves.

We haven't had, like, a new funding stream for it, but.

I mean, we've done things that probably a lot of other communities

would have taken for granted, but we were just so far behind on.

I mean, we didn't have Sunday bus service when I took office.

We've added Sunday bus service.

We, we didn't serve on holidays.

We've added holiday bus service.

I mean, just little stuff like that.

And we've tried to do better.

MAPS 4 then came along and presented yet another option for funding.

Let me ask you a question, Mayor, on the MAPS.

Are these referendums that you're putting out to the voters?

And how are they funded?

Yes, absolutely.

So these are temporary one cent sales taxes, and all taxes in Oklahoma

have to be approved by the voters.

We kind of as a community, these are big deals in Oklahoma City, we

kind of come together, we plan and talk for like a year or two, what's

going to be in the next maps, you know, and the 1st one had 9 projects.

MAPS 3 that had the streetcar in it, it had 8 projects and

the streetcar was 1 of them.

And then when I took office in 18, it was kind of time to talk about MAPS 4.

Okay.

And so, and so ultimately MAPS 4 was voted on by the voters in December

of 19, and it had 16 projects in it.

And 1, yeah, and it's 1.

1 billion dollars.

It's a 8 year, 1 cent sales tax.

And transit is basically one of the 16 projects, but within transit

are several sort of sub projects.

Yeah, let's walk through those.

Yeah.

So, so this is, you know, like 100M dollars ish, and it's going to fund, first

of all, Bus shelters, you know, like we have, you know, hundreds of stops and

most of them are like a, a metal pole

Yeah.

Right.

And, and maybe a stick in the mud, I call it.

Yeah.

stick in the mud.

Yeah, it's good.

And, this will basically provide a covered shelter.

For, every utilized stop, you know, as I found out through this process, I was

like, we have so many stops that, not so many, but I mean, you know, like,

and not a not insignificant number of stops that are highly underutilized.

But it's like, there's no real incentive to get rid of them.

There's not, they're not causing any problem.

You know, it's just the bus doesn't stop there.

If there's no one standing there, but someone may only stand

there once a week, you know.

but the ones that really have service that have, you know, some utilization at

a reasonable level, we will have a covered stop and we were able that's a perfect

kind of thing for maps to to address.

Yeah.

this maps four will also provide.

The funding to do a bus, rapid transit line to the Northeast and to the

South . So we already have the line that just opened to the Northwest.

That was largely funded by a federal grant.

Now, we'll have lines after the implementation of maps for it to

the Northeast and to the South.

And that's the biggest chunk of the maps for transit funding.

and there's some other little dollars in there for some other things, but those

are kind of the, that's the meat of it.

And then finally, the other big development in the last few years

with transit is the creation of our 1st regional transit authority.

Which state law had provided for the legislature had given us that option,

but nobody had utilized it yet.

And we were the 1st, we still are the only.

and so where it stands now is that Oklahoma City, Edmond and Norman,

those 2 large suburbs, 1 to the North, 1 to the South have created

the regional transit authority.

It's, it's sort of a separate government from from the cities themselves.

each of us sends representatives to the board, and I appointed

our former governor, Brad Henry, who is now a resident of Oklahoma

City and was kind of looking for a way to serve something to do.

And, you know, his post gubernatorial.

Service, and I was really excited to that he would take on this, this

obligation, because I also knew he's a, he's, he's a successful politician and

there's going to be a tax vote here.

There's no, there's no funding this without a tax vote.

And let's get a guy in there.

As the initial leader who understands politics too, you know, so, so he, he has

been chairing that now for 3 or 4 years.

And we are looking to a tax vote sometime in the next couple of years.

The state law only allows sales tax, and it would be a sales tax voted

on and collected basically in the three cities, which is the first.

We've never had anything quite like

that.

And would that be to fund the light rail that you were talking about?

Yeah, so the thought is that the responsibility chiefly of the Regional

Transit Authority the RTA, as we locally call it, would be to fund that light

rail line from, from Edmond and Norman.

you know, I mean, they'll exist forever.

So hopefully they'll continue to figure out new ways, but that's like job.

Number 1.

I think that's the sexiest thing.

That's the thing people want to see.

That's what that's what they'll have in mind when they vote.

and so, that's their major.

Major responsibility and contribution, but if you go back to that plan, I

talked about that we adopted as a community 20 years ago, you know,

we've added bus, rapid transit.

We're adding more lines.

We built the downtown streetcar.

That's done.

we are now in a conversation about light rail, and we've got a

mechanism in place to pursue that.

take connecting us to our 2 largest suburbs.

and, you know, on bus service, we're still working.

I find that to be the most challenging probably, because

it's just so operationally heavy.

It's not necessarily it's easier sometimes to find 1 time capital dollars.

Yeah.

it's harder to find that sort of perpetual operating.

money, and that's really what a better bus system requires, but, we're making more,

maybe more incremental improvements there.

But I would say this is a community that unabashedly and clearly is done a 180

on transit over the last 15 or 20 years.

And I credit my predecessor, Mick Cornett, and obviously I'm trying to

build upon that and I'm getting that.

Cut some of those ribbons that I think he laid the foundation for, and

obviously trying to plant some seeds of my own through maps four and the RTA.

And I like our direction and I think that our residents ultimately

will be very grateful for the forethought that's gone into this.

So that as traffic.

Escalates as crowding escalates, and they're looking for other options.

It's not too late.

You know, we've already got something at least.

in the pipeline, and so it's an interesting time in Oklahoma City.

It's.

You know, I look at the communities and I recognize we're decades behind, but,

you gotta, you know, you gotta start eating the elephant at some point.

And that's what we've done these last few years.

That's awesome, Mayor.

and so the transit couple questions, kind of like a lightning

round of a few questions here.

And then I want to get to your background for a few minutes before we wrap up.

So how is the current operation dollars funded for your transit system?

There is Jason Fairbrush.

He's your director.

Yeah, so Jason Fairbrush is our transit director.

He's also an assistant city manager in our form of government, a

council manager for my government.

We have a city manager.

He's got a handful of assistant city managers.

And Jason was the transit director and was doing such a great job that it was a

natural that he be elevated to assistant city manager, but he was so invaluable at

transit and so appreciated in that role.

He, he held on to it.

Gotcha.

I'm very grateful.

I don't know how he does it.

I mean, I guess I shouldn't talk.

I'm the mayor and the dean of a law school.

You know, we all wear multiple hats, but, but, you know, thankful to him for

how hard he works and managing those 2 things, but to answer your question about

where their transit dollars come from.

you know, it's largely general fund money.

okay, that's, you know, that makes it challenging.

Of course.

Yeah, I talked about, you know, I think I'm pretty much itemized

where, like, the capital dollars have all come for these new projects,

but in terms of operating dollars.

No, there's no, like, dedicated transit tax or anything like that.

I mean, we talk about it from time to time, but it just.

You know, the political will hasn't been there.

The RTA vote would be, would have to be a permanent tax.

So, like, maybe kind of the, the upfront years would be more capital heavy and

then it would sort of transition more to, to usage of for operating dollars.

But, but no, at the city level, we're just getting it out of general fund.

And, of course, look, people in transit take it for granted that fares are

maybe 10 percent of your costs, right?

Like, that that's not a major, that's not covering the cost

of providing the service.

Right?

I always think it's a little unfortunate that that's not more widely understood

because when you do charge something, people assume, lay people assume

that you're charging for a reason that that is covering the cost.

we get that a lot with the streetcar, you know, they'll say, can you believe

they're subsidizing the streetcar that those fares don't even cover?

We shouldn't even do it, you know, and I'm like, you know,

the nowhere in the country.

Yeah.

The New York subway doesn't pay for itself.

You know, like, everybody subsidizes transit.

I, I.

I get why some cities have looked at just eliminating fares completely,

because they're really kind of confusing more than anything, but sometimes

more trouble than they're worth.

But, but, yeah, we, we obviously, like, everybody get only a small

percentage of our funding from fares.

most of it's coming through the general fund, which is essentially

coming from sales taxes.

Well, you are a, I just want to say it a rare breed in the sense

that you are a pro transit Republican mayor of a city in, middle America.

And it has evidently worked for the voters because you got more votes in

your re election, I think, than anybody's gotten in a hundred years in this city.

So, congratulations, man.

Well, thank you.

Thank you.

Well, look, it's like everything, everything in moderation, right?

I mean, if you're ideological about it and you're like, well, I'm a Republican.

I can't be for transit at all.

That's a stupid worldview, first of all, but also, it's really not that popular.

I mean, there's certainly a significant proportion of Republicans

who support some public transit.

I think, I think when cities get into trouble, and especially when they

push it so far that they fail some big referendum, they get maybe too ambitious.

And that ambition is pleasing to some part of the electorate.

They want to hear it.

I want to hear it.

You know, I want it, I want the number to, I want the number to start with

the B, you know, I want it to be, I want it to project out into 2060, you

know, I want like, I want that vision.

And the problem is not everybody's there.

So I think a good mayor is finding that middle ground, you know, maybe,

maybe scale back the vision a little bit, but not to zero, you know,

like, let's, let's find that middle ground where people can say, yeah.

So, so I think like, you look at the RTA, Okay.

I think the middle ground, kind of the, the moderate view is, let's just

talk about Edmond and Norman, you know, let's not talk about 16 different lines

to every corner of the of the region.

Yeah, that's where cities make a mistake.

They kind of, they get too excited, you know, and they get

kind of ginned up by people.

Who are naturally and understandably excited about this stuff, but are

really kind of outliers politically, you know, and let's talk about 1 line.

Let's start there.

I think that's what the population can stomach on a bipartisan basis.

Yeah.

and and then we'll, we'll be more successful.

So, yeah, I mean, I may be a registered Republican, although I want to be

clear in our form of government.

I'm nonpartisan and I take that.

you know, I take that very seriously.

but I had been a Republican in the state Senate and so I have that history.

but my view is that in my experience is that lots of Republicans are

not like completely lying in the sand against public transit.

They just want something that's kind of reasonable and maybe not too ambitious.

That's interesting.

Yeah, I didn't mean to indicate that Republicans aren't for it, but you, you,

you've really gotten a, a great vision and are willing to kind of put some of your

political capital out there to, to raise funds and put money in your MAPS program.

So kudos to you from our perspective in transit that you're making

logical steps in the right direction.

It seems like, you know, and you got a 20 year plan and you're carrying it out.

That's awesome.

Yeah, no, I'm proud of our community.

I think, and I think again, we sort of found that middle ground and look,

I understand why you would say what you said a minute ago and don't pull

back because there are absolutely Republican Party platforms across this

country that are Anti transit, you know, like, absolutely shut it down.

Don't have it at all.

But that has always represented in reality a, a kind of an extremist view,

you know, and again, like, I operate on this issue and all other issues

by, by working with the 70 percent of normal people in the middle from

both political parties who just want to work together and get things done.

And I'm fully recognize that in modern American politics.

You know, close partisan primaries sort of elevate the extremes at both ends.

And in our case, we have a type of electoral system that is really

allowed me to kind of just find that sweet spot of normality in the

middle and, and find a path forward that is good enough for both sides.

Maybe not pleasing to the extremists who hate transit or the extremists

who think we should spend our entire budget on transit, but for the 70

percent in the middle who want to see moderate steps and moderate thoughtful

steps forward on public transit, we found that sweet spot for sure.

Well, thank you for giving us, what we don't often get, which is kind

of like, the political view of transit and how the long term process, the planning,

and how to actually get things done.

because if you're not, if you don't have a seat at the table and you're

not bringing the majority of the people with you, it's probably not

going to be there for the long term.

So, this has been a very instructive interview, I think.

Thank you so much, Mayor Holt.

Yeah, absolutely.

My pleasure.

Yeah, no, I mean, finding that, yeah, that look, that's my world is to sort of bring

the dreamers together with the realists and the realists are those who get

politics, especially in a community like ours, where anything of substance is going

to have to pass a vote of the people.

Well, we wish you the very best in your upcoming role as

the head of the US Conference of Mayors, a very important position.

and congratulations on your recent stepping up as dean of the law school

there in Oklahoma, a fellow attorney.

Nice to meet you there too.

Hopefully we can check back with you in a couple of years when you're head of the U.

S.

Conference of Mayors and, and talk to you more about what's happening

nationally with cities across the country and your role there.

Sounds great.

Thank you, Paul.

All right.

Thanks.

This is Tris Hussey editor of the Transit Unplugged podcast.

Thanks for listening to this week's episode, featuring mayor David

Holt of Oklahoma city, Oklahoma.

Now coming up next week on the show we have Justin Stuehrenberg General Manager

of the Madison Metro Transit System, talking about all the big projects

he's got going on there in Wisconsin.

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