SWIERCEK: Omaha public transit system leaves much to be desired

Sometimes the places you visit are less interesting than how you get there.


At least, that's how it sometimes is when I vacation or visit other cities. It's not because the places I visit are uninteresting, but because I have an obsession with public transportation and alternatives to driving. This is rooted in a belief that there's a better way to get from one point to another than driving.


I make a point of exploring public transportation, city trails and bike lanes in most major cities I visit. I have a love affair with Chicago's El Train and the streetcars in Portland, Ore. I'm envious of Minneapolis, Salt Lake City and Denver's public will to build multiple light rail lines.

As a frequent commuter between Omaha and Lincoln, I'm inspired by New Mexico's determination to build an intercity rail between Santa Fe and Albuquerque rather than add additional interstate lanes as Nebraska chose to do. And I'm unembarrassed to admit my extreme jealousy of Minneapolis and Portland's vast networks of bicycle lanes and bicycle-exclusive city trails.


Those cities' respective leaders have proven to be forward-thinking about planning their city's future and have created alternative systems that work.


It's given me a bad case of mass transit-envy having grown up in Omaha, a city thoroughly hostile to people trying to get from point A to point B without a vehicle. Actually, ‘hostile' doesn't quite do justice to the state of transportation in Omaha.


You're screwed if you don't own a car.


Try taking the city's MAT bus across town and you'll find that what is normally a 15-minute drive can turn into a 90-minute ordeal. Much of the city isn't designed for walking and Omahans know it. Should you consider walking somewhere outside of midtown, prepare to have people stare as you attempt to cross a four- or six-lane highway. And commuter bike lanes? Forget about it.


So when I visit these other cities I can't help but compare how my hometown of Omaha stacks up and what it could emulate. So it's no surprise that I've closely followed Omaha's intermittent efforts to build a new streetcar system and reflect on Omaha's former mass-transit past.


Omaha once had a streetcar network that stretched across the city prior to the mid-1950s, before automotive companies across the country rapidly bought up and liquidated streetcar networks and replaced them with buses.

Streetcars linked the downtown central business district with Omaha's western suburbs and its communities in North and South Omaha, connecting Florence in the far north to the packing plants, stockyards and Offutt Air Force Base in the south. Back then you didn't need to own a car to get from one place to another.


But after World War II, streetcar ridership gradually declined in usage out of competition with the automobile and the system folded by the mid-1950s. The city more than doubled its size by the end of the 1960 through aggressive annexation and the creation of sanitary improvement districts, which helped housing developers finance parks, roads, sewers and utilities.

In 1960, 72nd Street was the far western edge of town. Today that edge lies closer to 204th Street in recently-annexed Elkhorn. Newly-constructed expressways stitched together these growing suburban communities with downtown while thoroughfares began to resemble highways more than streets.


Omaha became a car-town during this period of extraordinary growth while giving up any meaningful commitment to public transit. Omaha's dependence on the automobile left Omahans, particularly those with low-incomes or limited mobility, few options to get anywhere efficiently without a car.

Omaha's bus system is perpetually under-funded and painfully inadequate. And unmitigated urban sprawl has only exacerbated the problem, especially since downtown and city-based jobs gradually moved to the suburbs or left town altogether.


But some alternative transit plans have arisen intermittently.


In the early 1970s, as the city shelved plans for a controversial western freeway through affluent neighborhoods, city planners suggested a light rail stretching from 132nd Street down Dodge Street and into Council Bluffs, Iowa. That plan never mustered support.

In the 1990s, former mayor and current mayoral candidate Hal Daub campaigned for a trolley line to circulate downtown and connect it with Rosenblatt Stadium and the Henry Doorly Zoo. In 2003, the city council narrowly defeated that proposal by one vote.


In 2006, Mayor Mike Fahey proposed the creation of a new streetcar network that could eventually expand to include light rails. The starting route would run 3.5 miles from Creighton University through North Downtown and connect it with the Old Market and the area immediately to its west. That old proposal also suggested an additional line extending south to Rosenblatt and the Zoo and a third line west down Farnam Street toward Mutual of Omaha and the University of Nebraska Medical Center.


Cost projections for that downtown route suggested a price of $55 million. The mayor proposed creating a tax-increment financing district, where new property taxes near the permanent streetcar line would pay construction bonds instead of relying on state, federal or city tax funds. A new streetcar study will be released this May showing new route proposals.


If Omaha builds a new transit system it needs to be more than just a plan to spur downtown development. It needs to lay a foundation for a substantive and expandable mass transit system that reaches communities across the entire city and make vehicles not an absolute necessity. And it also requires strong public support.


Yet if the MAT system indicates how much Omahans actually value mass transit, then unfortunately we're likely not yet there. I still have hopes that sooner or later I won't always have to drive everywhere in Omaha just to get around.


Nic Swiercek is a graduate History student. Reach him at nicswiercek@dailynebraskan.com.