Oklahoma City Is Taking Transit Seriously (Which Is What Booming Regions Should Do)

With great growth comes great responsibility … to give residents better transit alternatives.

That was the message coming from Oklahoma City Mayor David Holt in his recent 2026 State of the City Address introducing a proposed sales tax to fund the region’s vision for transit expansion.

He wants to avoid the mistakes of peer cities like Austin and Nashville that have grown precipitously in recent decades without accommodating additional travel capacity, resulting in hellish levels of congestion. 

He also knows that highway expansion isn’t an acceptable long-term solution. 

“The metro has pretty much reached the point of saturation with highways,” said Holt. “New highways or adding significantly more lanes is just not feasible for most of our existing system. Adding lanes is not the panacea you may think it is.” He then showed the crowd a photo of a jam-packed 12-lane Interstate 405 in Los Angeles. 

Instead of that carmaggedon, Holt is pitching a transit improvement sales tax aimed at giving residents alternatives to the car-based transportation planning that dominates the U.S. 

“We can learn from their mistakes. The time to make a commitment is now,” he added. “That commitment must give us the resources we need to strengthen our existing system of city streets for those who remain in cars, and it must provide public transit alternatives that take some cars off the road and, at the very least, give each of us a choice.”

Oklahoma City has been able to facilitate growth in large part because of its Metropolitan Area Projects initiatives. The first iteration coming in 1993, the one-cent sales tax has funded numerous capital improvement projects aimed at transforming the city’s infrastructure and strengthen cultural amenities.

Past uses of that tax funded what is now the Oklahoma City Thunder’s arena, the revitalization of the historic Bricktown district, the OKC Streetcar, and bus rapid transit projects that are currently in the works. 

Three-quarters of the proposed transit tax would go to bus and rail infrastructure and improvements, with the remaining quarter going to maintenance of existing infrastructure. 

Oklahoma leaders knew that growth would necessitate building for the future. That’s why, in 2019, they formed the state’s first regional transit authority that would oversee this expansion, now known as ONE Transit. 

The agency is comprised of Oklahoma City and its two most prominent suburbs, Norman and Edmond. All three of the cities have experiencede remarkable growth in the past 20 years. The population of Oklahoma City, for example, increased by 17.4 percent between 2010 and 2020 and is on track to increase another 11.4 percent by 2030.

That’s on track for a population of more than 750,000, plus another 130,000 in Norman and 100,000 in Edmond — which are both growing.

The backbone of ONE Transit’s transit expansion plan for the region includes commuter rail that will connect all three cities with key stopping points along the way. The line would be created along an existing BNSF rail corridor. 

The hope is that the commuter rail line will enable those in the suburbs to feed into Oklahoma City’s more robust transit options in the downtown area, which already includes the improving bus network and the OKC Streetcar.

Future plans also include more robust bus rapid transit lines, including a western route, a route to Will Rogers International Airport to the southwest, and a route to Tinker Air Force Base to the east. A light rail line to the airport would be the final piece of the plan.

ONE Transit understands the value that transit can provide for a local economy, citing an APTA study that shows a five-to-one economic return produced by long-term investment in public transit.

“Collectively, this plan will preserve our quality of life by alleviating traffic congestion, it will preserve the mobility necessary to keep our economy strong and growing, and it will spur commercial development, among other benefits,” Holt said in his address, aligning with ONE Transit’s vision.

There are signs of a growing appetite for transit alternatives in the area. The OKC streetcar recently announced that its free fare pilot program was being extended until Aug. 20 due to increased ridership. The program kicked off in January of this year and brought 37 percent more ridership between January and April versus the same period last year.

The city’s first and only bus rapid transit line also saw a record month this year, with over 60,000 rides in May. 

Levels of support for the tax remain uncertain. Hope in the region certainly took a hit when riders learned that Oklahoma lawmakers failed to include 2027 funding for the Amtrak Heartland Flyer, the line between Oklahoma City and Fort Worth.

The measure is sure to meet a challenge in car-oriented and fiscally conservative Oklahoma, but there is hope that residents will see past success with Metropolitan Area Projects in boosting the health of the city. Holt is calling on Oklahomans to rise to the occasion.

“The resources we have today are not sufficient to meet the challenges of growth,” he said. “Meeting this new transportation challenge is going to require a new commitment from each of us.”

The proposed sales tax would need approval from Oklahoma City, Norman, and Edmond and then could be put up for a vote in 2027.