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Member since: March 20, 2013
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The author's use of the superlative "superb" with regard to Gary Ridley is considerably more than puzzling. Seems as though Oklahoma journalists have nearly all blindly subscribed to the overriding praise of Ridley despite the cold and obvious realities of his tenure as ODOT Director.
In Oklahoma City, Ridley quite deliberately carried out the needless destruction of the elegant OKC Union Station rail facility to make way for the equally unnecessary "relocation" of four miles of Interstate 40 -- heedless of a storm of well-founded public protest.
"Well, Tom -- there WAS a time when we didn't even have to ASK you what you thought" -- was his utterly arrogant and dismissive response when I asked, point-blank, why ODOT never seriously addressed any of the very serious questions from the public about the clearly pre-emptive destruction of the irreplaceable rail passenger facility.
Getting right down to the heart of the matter, Gary Ridley is a highway lobby thug -- of the sort who should never have been allowed anywhere near the leadership of the state's Department of Transportation. When cornered, ODOT, under Gary Ridley, has regularly and outrageously resorted to deliberate deception, often even as it impugned the motives and goals of unpaid citizen activists whose questions it refused to address.
It is quite clear that Ridley and the highway lobby obsessively carried out the destruction of the Union Station rail facility to deny its very cost-effective use to create needed alternatives to ODOT's "highways-only kingdom" while covering themselves with a fog of nonsensical diversionary propaganda, not the least of which was outrageous lowballing of cost estimates for their project.
The outcome of this determined orgy of vandalism and destruction -- as clearly counted-on by ODOT and its co-dependent special interest partners -- is that, instead of getting a very low cost leg-up on the need for improved (and competitive) metropolitan mobility through the use of the improbable patrimony known as Union Station, central Oklahomans will now probably never have a decent transit system. In one bold stroke, Ridley and company sent Oklahoma City to the back of the line for transit development -- and they quite certainly meant to do exactly that. In an era when US troops are constantly fighting around the world for oil, however, the gratuitous destruction of this rail center with its portent of fuel-efficient alternatives through simple, cheap, adaptive reuse of historic existing assets easily rises from mere, dirty malfeasance to obvious and inescapable treason.
Meanwhile -- what's wrong with Oklahoma's press?
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