Local Government

OKC’s proposed commuter rail won’t be faster than driving

October 6, 2026

Ray Carter

As Oklahoma City metro-area officials urge local citizens to support a tax increase to partially fund a $1.8 billion commuter rail system stretching 39 miles from Edmond to Oklahoma City to Norman, they have offered several rationales for support.

However, those arguments won’t include two notable words: “fast” and “convenient.”

That’s because rail systems are normally slower than driving and involve more logistical challenges than traveling down the road in an automobile.

Baruch Feigenbaum, senior managing director of transportation policy at Reason Foundation, notes that “travel time for commuter rail is typically 1.5 to 2 times longer than for cars.”

“The reason is that commuter rail makes stops for passengers along the way that personal automobiles do not,” Feigenbaum said. “It’s also due to where the stops are located. It’s rare that somebody lives right next to a train stop and works right next to a train stop. So that time between a passenger’s house and the stop and a passenger’s workplace and the stop, whether by personal automobile, transit, walking, etc., needs to be factored in as well.”

In 2020, when researchers examined four major public transit (PT) systems in São Paulo, Brazil; Stockholm, Sweden; Sydney, Australia; and Amsterdam, the Netherlands, they found that using the transit systems, which included passenger rail, took “on average 1.4–2.6 times longer than driving a car.”

The report acknowledged that “there is strong evidence that car-based travel is often faster than public transit.”

That finding is not unusual. A December 2021 research paper similarly noted, “Travel time with car tends to be lower than that of PT, in most cities.”

Oklahoma City metro officials project the proposed commuter-rail system will travel at an average speed of 60 to 79 miles per hour.

At a constant speed of 79 miles per hour with no stops, it would take the train 29.6 minutes to travel the 39 miles from Edmond to the rail’s end point in Norman, near the University of Oklahoma.

But since the rail will make 10 stops from beginning to end, that could add around 30 minutes to the trip if each stop takes only three minutes apiece, bringing the total travel time on the train to nearly an hour.

That’s longer than it takes to drive a car from Edmond to Norman on a typical day, even during rush hour.

The drive from the University of Oklahoma in Norman to Edmond typically takes between 39 and 49 minutes, according to the online Rush Hour Planner. Driving from Edmond to the University of Oklahoma takes between 37 and 57 minutes, depending on the time of day.

Furthermore, the Oklahoma City train’s average travel speed may be slower than the projected rate of 60 to 79 miles per hour.

“Trains take a lot of time to slow down and stop and a lot of time to speed up again,” said Randal O’Toole, director of the Independence Institute’s Transportation Policy Center.

As a result, he said the proposed Oklahoma City commuter rail may “rarely get to run at 70 mph” due to the multiple stops and may “be lucky to be around 50 mph.”

In a recent analysis, O’Toole noted that a proposed commuter rail system running between Fort Collins and Pueblo, Colorado—the Colorado Connector (or CoCo)—would also be slower than driving.

“Driving from Fort Collins to Denver takes about 65 minutes during non-peak periods and 90 minutes during rush hour,” O’Toole wrote. “CoCo will take 105 minutes. Pueblo to Denver is two hours by car and two-and-a-half hours during rush hour but will be at least two-and-three-quarter hours by CoCo.”

If the proposed Oklahoma City passenger rail system operates as projected and in line with the performance of similar systems around the country, he said passengers will have to set aside more time for travel by train than what would be required to drive the same distance by car.

“There is no way that rail will be as fast as driving,” O’Toole said. “Buses would probably be faster.”