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"Well, I had a fine adventure on Tulsa Transit this morning. I got on a 105, bus number 2015, which said route 101 over the windshield. Fortunately, I was on Peoria, not downtown, so I wasn't fooled--yet. Then I got on a bus marked 251 Fasttrack downtown, and it proceeded to cross Cincinnati on Second and turn north on Detroit. Now, this would either mean it was taking a major detour--like a different highway--to get to the 'midtown' station out on the east side, or it was really a 203 masquerading as a 251. Either way, it wasn't going to help me catch the 318, which runs about once every hour and a half, so I was without any hope of making my appointment. I got off the bus and walked back to the Denver Ave. station, and in came a 105 South which would in theory get me back home, with a dollar and a half and an hour's worth of time wasted.
But I was in no mood to take chances--especially since it was bus number 2013. So, I asked the driver if this was really the 105 South. He nodded. I then told him I had been on a 105 claiming to be a 101, and a 203 masquerading as a 251, and joked that it seemed to be April Fool's Day and maybe he didn't get the memo. He promptly threatened to throw me off the bus if I didn't shut up. So I sat down and shut up. He then proceeded to turn right at Second and Boulder from other than the right lane, and stay in other than the right lane until he had bypassed the stop by the Hyatt and made an elderly woman walk halfway to City Hall to get on. Shortly afterwards he lied to a man on Second east of Elgin about whether he could catch the 210 there--the poor guy may still be waiting for that bus as you read this--griped at a woman for using a marked and shelter-equipped stop in a construction zone, and let a man on with a lit cigar. Good enough for government work, I guess.
Also good enough for government work was the Dallas consultant who told the city a while back that the railroad line in the middle of the Broken Arrow Expressway would make a fine light rail commuter line, and recommended that a park and ride lot be set up at either 42nd and Memorial or 36th and Sheridan. They got millions and millions of dollars for this. Service cutbacks occured shortly afterwards, and nothing more in the way of light rail development has come along. Millions of dollars to Dallas when any idiot who was actually born and raised in Tulsa could tell you that the same rail line crosses 51st Street right underneath Highway 169, and a park and ride lot at that location could actually share a traffic light with the 169 on- and off-ramps.
Mass transit is a laudable goal. But it's abundantly clear that if this city is ever to have a viable system, we're going to have to make up our minds that mass transit is much TOO GOOD for government work."
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