Transit Meltdown- Carless Rating #3: 63rd and May Avenue

The last 5 days have been full of trials for Beth and me; mostly stemming from not having an automobile. All were met with success, but that’s not to say having a car wouldn’t have made our weekend much more convenient. What is becoming abundantly clear in this experiment is the need for improved access to amenities in our daily lives, as well as improved infrastructure for accessing said amenities.

Sometimes you can prepare for a carless trip across town and have all the details ironed out; but the chaotic entropy of the universe oozes all over your plans and forces you to be able to change plans at a moment’s notice. One thing we needed desperately to make our apartment feel more like a home was a good mattress. Up until now we’ve been using a very nice air mattress I borrowed from one of my very gracious co-workers that replaced our camping mattress we were able to fit in our luggage that we brought from Georgia. We haven’t been getting very good sleep, and it has been affecting our energy levels throughout the days. So, Thursday, Beth decided would be “Mattress Day”.

I got off work an hour early since I worked an extra hour earlier in the week, and we were going to catch the bus, Line 7, out to 63^rd Street and May to go to Big Lots and purchase a mattress. Well, we ended up missing the bus we had planned to take at 4:15, but that shouldn’t have been an issue as another bus on the 7 line was arriving at the downtown transit center at 5:00pm. Beth and I got to the bus station with our bus fare in hand at 4:45 and sat down to wait for the bus. There were several other people waiting for our bus – a diverse group of all different ages and races. 5:00pm rolls around and the bus hasn’t shown up. This isn’t too surprising, it being rush hour and all, so we all sit patiently. 5:15 comes and goes, and everyone is getting beginning to get anxious or downright annoyed. It’s now 5:25 and the bus still isn’t there. I think one woman summed up the feeling of everyone, however uncouthly, with her frustrated exclamation, “God Damn it! I got things to be!” It was a funny moment amidst an air of growing frustration.

Finally, at 5:30, a bus whose marquee read “Going Home” pulls into the station, immediately followed by a bus with “Number 7” on the marquee. The driver of the “Going Home” bus was actually the number 7 bus that didn’t show up at 5:00, and had somehow fallen a half-hour behind schedule. She had no reason to have the “Going Home” marquee indicated, but none of the people waiting had any patience for her incompetency and boarded the second number 7 bus which could not pull into the station fully, half hanging out in the road, due to this very late bus. This was very frustrating, and clearly represented a dangerous liability for the Metro Transit system as people boarding a bus in a street are at risk for being hit by other vehicles.

Finally we get on the bus and on our way to the 63^rd and May. Everyone on the bus was enjoying our bus driver’s animated frustration and humor regarding the driver of the previous bus, and we all had a very pleasant ride being able to bond over a common crisis.

After about a 30-minute ride Beth and I dismounted the bus at the bus stop in front of the Big Lots. This bus stop, sadly, is typical for Oklahoma bus stops. A lone bench, with three 2x4s for a seat and an advertisement for a back, sitting on a grassy shoulder with no sidewalk is just about the bare minimum a transit system can provide for its riders. What’s interesting is that COTPA (Central Oklahoma Transit and Parking Authority) doesn’t actually provide the majority of the bus stops in the city. That is contracted out to an advertisement company that owns billboards in the city. The company seems to think that they are doing the city a service by providing these benches for bus stops, but it’s clear what the real motivation is. The bus benches are miniature billboards. The owners have an incentive to make the benches as unusable as possible so as to not obscure the signs on the backing. There is rarely any shelter and often no access for the disabled. It is a sad state of affairs that must be fixed if COTPA plans to have transit system worth anything. I can think of no better way to bolster the transit system and increase ridership than by improving the conditions of bus stops around this city.

Beth and I found a mattress we liked and purchased it. Big Lots will deliver furniture for a flat rate of $60, and will also hold furniture at their store for you to pick up later, which makes purchasing furniture without a car very manageable. The staff was very helpful and friendly. Also in the shopping center is an Akin’s Health Food store where Beth was able to get chocolate soy milk, which you can’t get anywhere in the downtown area, not even Native Roots!

After eating a fast-food dinner while we waited for the bus, our adventure began again. We caught the line 7 bus heading back to downtown, and it was the last bus of the night. It was the same driver we had coming out to Big Lots and she was still talking to people on the bus about how much the previous bus driver had thrown off the route schedule. Many people were upset about how their plans for the evening were disrupted because of these issues. It just goes to show how important it is for a transit system to be well-monitored and staffed with competent, responsible drivers. The ripple effect of this one driver’s inability to be on schedule and follow protocol affected hundreds of Oklahoma City citizens.

The way that it affected us was particularly bad. Because this was the last bus of the night, it was not en route to return to the downtown transit center, but was heading south on Pennsylvania Avenue back to the bus depot. We only found this out as we boarded the bus. The driver was able to take us as far as 10^th Street and Penn, which we accepted because it was a much shorter distance to travel than where we presently were. 10^th and Penn is about 1.5 miles away from our apartment, and is a quickly growing neighborhood. As we came to find out, however, it is still very rough around the edges and was legitimately scary to walk through after dark. I would not recommend anyone do this. We stayed on the well-lit 10^th Street all the way to Classen, turned south, and then east on 5^th Street back to our apartment. It was cold, somewhat frightening, and an overall pain in the ass that could have all been avoided had the one bus driver not ruined it for everyone.

Thursday night was an adventure that I won’t soon forget, and I’m very glad I had my brave and beautiful wife to go through it with, but I think it might be better to plan for trips of this length to be weekend activities that we can accomplish before nightfall.

The distance to Big Lots from our home is about 7 miles, which took around 30 minutes on the bus, which scores an outright F on our scale, but we only had to walk about a mile and a half in total, which would be a B. Given the fact that we had not planned on walking any substantial distance at all, I’m giving this a D.

The pedestrian and transit infrastructure on this journey varied in different locations. For the evening I don’t think I can give the transit system anything higher than a D. We did get where we were going, but we did not get back from where we were going, and the bus stop was down-right depressing. At Big Lots there were very few elements of walkability. The walk from 10^th and Penn was very walkable though, with sidewalks the entire way home. Regardless, I don’t feel comfortable giving anything higher than a D for this journey.

In terms of transportation options to and around 63^rd and May Avenue, the transit system failed to function correctly, there is a significant lack of pedestrian infrastructure, and there are no bike lanes. This location is only convenient to reach by motor vehicle. Again, I’m going to go with a D, because the transit system doesn’t always suck.

The land use choices in the 63^rd and May area are not terrible, if a bit corporate. As a retail hub there is a wealth of things to choose from, though the region may be suffering a decline. It’s hard to say whether the few vacancies in the numerous strip malls are the beginning of a trend or a temporary thing. While there are better areas to shop in the city, there were many people at the various stores. I’ll give it a C.

The atmosphere of this whole evening ebbed from a downright disaster, to a pleasant shopping experience, to a fearful trek home. It was definitely stimulating, but to encounter major inconvenience that puts you in a place where you’re fearful for your well-being is not an acceptable outcome of a car-less journey. The only real redeeming atmosphere was the helpful Big Lots staff. I’m going to give this a D.

So that’s four Ds and one C for a score of 9 out of a possible 25. I think this trip could have scored much higher if the transit system were better controlled. That said, there is a great need for improvements in the pedestrian infrastructure on 63^rd and May. The number one thing that I see that needs to change is that the busses should finish their routes back at the transit center downtown before heading to the depot for the night so as not to strand downtowners in dangerous areas. 

Transit Meltdown: The Aftermath

In the last post, John wrote about our bogus journey to buy a mattress. That was last Thursday night, so we had the entire weekend to deal with the aftermath, which I'm going to tell you about now.

On Thursday night, we left our precious new mattress at Big Lots to be contended with later. We had more options than we would usually have with a new piece of furniture, as far as needing to get the furniture to our home and how to achieve that while being carless. As John said before, Big Lots offers furniture delivery for a flat rate of $60, which would usually have been our only viable option, but they will also hold furniture to be picked up later. That was actually an option for us with this furniture purchase, because John's dad was coming to visit us the following day! We realized that we could have Big Lots hold the mattress and box spring for us and then return the following evening with John's dad, and more importantly, John's dad's car, to pick it up and bring it home.

As the theme of the weekend was "nothing goes as expected," this, of course, was not to be.

John's dad, Scott, arrived on Friday with a big carload of our belongings. That was the main purpose of this trip: to bring us a good bit of the possessions we left behind in Georgia when we moved to OKC. Being able to visit with us, albeit briefly, was just a nice bonus. Scott arrived around 1:00 PM, so John was still at work for the rest of the afternoon. I welcomed Scott to our home and then we decided to unload the boxes from his car.

John and I love our apartment, but our building tends to make bad first impressions. The day we arrived, the power in the building went out and stayed out for a full night and a large part of the next day. We live on the 19th floor, so this was quite an inconvenience, as the elevators weren't working and we had to climb 19 flights of stairs any time we left our apartment.

We expected something similarly lame to happen when John's dad arrived, and we were not disappointed; a new tenant was (allegedly) moving in that very afternoon and had taken the sole loading cart. I say that this new tenant was "allegedly" moving in because although he or she had arrived, reserved the freight elevator for the afternoon, and disappeared with the loading cart, we never saw him or her, and neither had anyone at the front desk, as they informed us when we inquired about using the cart. I don't know if the new tenant had arrived and then immediately left to run errands instead of unloading their belongings without letting the front desk know, but either way, it was a very inconvenient time to have the loading cart go missing.

Scott and I begrudgingly began unloading boxes from his car one or two at a time each (depending on how heavy they were), carrying them into the building, riding the elevator to the 19th floor, and depositing them in the apartment, intermittently taking short breaks to recuperate. I had not worked out that day because I was cleaning in anticipation of my father-in-law's visit, but I inadvertently got my strength training in by carrying heavy boxes for three hours, so the situation was fortuitous in that way, I guess.

The fun doesn't stop there. For all of those readers who aren't Oklahomans, here's a fun fact for you: OKC is windy as HELL. Friday was a particularly blustery day, with isolated gusts reaching well over 40 mph. John's dad was parked across the street from our apartment building and at one point, the wind straight-up blew a box out of his arms and onto the street. We could barely stand up straight in this wind, much less when we were encumbered with heavy boxes. (Increased resistance for my strength training? I have no idea what I'm talking about.)

Scott started to worry that we wouldn't be able to get our mattress home that night. His smallish SUV was not quite roomy enough to fit the mattress inside, so we were planning to strap it down on top of the vehicle, but the howling prairie winds were starting to make that plan look like an impossibility. I repeatedly assured him that although OKC is super-windy, I had noticed that the wind died down by the evening on most days, and we'd probably be safe to bring the mattress home later that evening.

I really wanted that mattress.

Also, I was totally wrong. The wind continued to blast full-force through the city after John got home from work that afternoon, so we revised our plan for the night: dinner first, mattress pickup second. We were hoping that eating an early dinner would not only buy us enough time that the wind would weaken by the time we headed to Big Lots, but also help us to beat the dinner rush. Wrong again, because our dinner plan was to show John's dad an authentic (and delicious) piece of Oklahoma City history, and apparently everyone else in the city had the same idea: The Cattlemen's Steakhouse.

The Cattlemen's Steakhouse is over 100 years old, and home to former President George H.W. Bush's preferred T-bone steak. If there's one thing - literally only one thing - I would trust that man about, it's steak. It turns out that I am correct in that sentiment, because John and I have eaten there twice now, once for breakfast, and then for dinner, and it's been SUPER DELICIOUS both times. We are a steak-loving couple, and we love the Cattlemen's Steakhouse. Our dinner there with John's dad did not disappoint; we stuffed ourselves with perfectly cooked sirloin steaks and baked potatoes, and tried their house beer, Double Deuce, which was shockingly good.

We waddled back to the car and headed to Big Lots to deal with the mattress situation. It had become abundantly obvious that we were not going to be picking it up and taking it home, because the gales of wind had not subsided anywhere near enough to make anyone feel comfortable strapping a mattress on top of a car and driving with it. John and Scott arranged for the mattress delivery and we headed back home.

John's dad headed out early the next morning to drive back to Georgia. We saw him off, walked down to (the delicious and locally roasted!) Elemental Coffee for a decaf for me, and then we settled in to wait for the mattress to arrive. The delivery window was "noon to 3:00," and sure enough, the delivery men did not arrive until about 2:50pm. Don't get me wrong, I'm thankful that they at least arrived within the promised window, but we had also waited around that entire time. To quote our bus stop friend from the last entry, I got things to be.

The mattress delivery in and of itself was a pain, yet mercifully brief. The usual protocol for furniture delivery at our apartment building involves delivery trucks driving around to a back loading area which opens into the back door of the freight elevator, but the freight elevator was not available, as it turned out. Surprise, surprise: the same chucklehead who had reserved the freight elevator the day before "to move" and then didn't use it, had reserved it again. We had to coax the delivery men to park across the street and carry the mattress & box spring across the street and into the normal elevator, all while listening to constant lame chatter and vaguely sexist jokes from the main delivery man. Thankfully, it was an easy job and they were out of our lives pretty quickly.

And then... THEN, we were free. Free to lie on our wonderful comfy new mattress for the next two days, with short departures to go eat Thai food at Thai Kitchen (our favorite restaurant with a walkability rating of approximately 1 billion, but we'll do a formal rating and review of that one in another post), pick beer at Broadway Wine Merchants (awesome craft beer selection and equally awesome walkability rating), and for dinner and bowling at Redpin in Bricktown.

See how happy I am?

This mattress is absolutely amazing. We are both so happy with it! After sleeping on an air mattress for about a month and a half, the mattress feels utterly decadent. We had decided to buy at Big Lots to be economical but we are definitely pleasantly surprised with the quality and comfort we got with this purchase.

There's not really a carless rating involved with this post; the ground covered here, so to speak, is the same route/place that John rated in the last post. The troubles we had with getting our mattress to our home were not necessarily specific to being carless. I wrote this post as a wrap-up and to let you all know how the mattress adventure turned out. Thankfully, it has a very happy - and comfy - ending!



Stay tuned - upcoming posts on Carless in OKC include our Veteran's Day Shopping Catastrophe (or, Why It's Important To Read Numbers Properly) and my rating of my latest carless interviewing jaunt.