OKLAHOMA CITY – Leaders and representatives for EMBARK – the City of OKC’s public transit authority – gathered Thursday to celebrate two years of successful operation for the city’s Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) system, and to mark the one millionth rider on the line.
Since launching in December of 2023, the BRT has averaged over 1,000 passengers each day with only minimal delays, service stoppages, or complications, and in just over two years, the service is already celebrating its one millionth rider, with hopes and plans to continue growing.
Free Press covered the launch and the initial public rollout of the service in late-2023:
Different from a traditional city bus route, the Bus Rapid Transit system functions more like an above-ground subway, with a whole fleet of buses traversing the same looping route across a large portion of the city, one after another, ensuring that a new bus arrives for passengers roughly every fifteen minutes.
According to EMBARK Director Jesse Rush, the comfort and proficiency of the system and its operators is actually reducing that time even further.
“We’re averaging about 93% on-time performance with the BRT,” Rush told Free Press. “And we’re getting that frequency closer to about 12 minutes.”
Those are encouraging numbers for proponents of public transportation hoping to develop a more widespread, widely utilized transit service connecting the full Oklahoma City Metro area, like the newly rebranded ONE Transit, formerly the Regional Transportation Authority of Central Oklahoma.
“With the success of the BRT, we’re really building confidence in public transit,” Rush said of EMBARK’s role in those bigger-picture plans. “We’re able to take that confidence and bring it to the people working to make that bigger investment in public transportation.”
But of course the success and efficiency of any public transit system rests squarely on the operators themselves, the drivers and de facto customer service representatives behind the wheel that keep the buses moving and keep the passengers on time for their day.
Those are the goals of operators like Fritz Ethridge, a driver on the BRT that’s been with the service since day one.
“I just love this job, “Ethridge told Free Press during the small celebration at the BRT’s Park & Ride location at Northwest Expressway and Meridian Ave.
“I’ve seen how the BRT has made a big difference in this community,” he said. “I mean just look at the numbers. One million riders. That tells me that the community wanted it and the community needed it.”
Ethridge told stories about daily passengers that he’s come to know by name – like Mr. June, who rides nearly every day and who Ethridge chats with about art and OKC’s famous hidden bison statues – and he emphasized the ability of the bus system to be a great equalizing force across the city’s varied demographics.
“We get doctors, nurses, City Council people, retirees, and guys like me, you know, and we all get together here every day,” he said. “I’ve never seen a place with so much diversity. It doesn’t matter where you come from, whether you’re homeless or you’re a doctor. You get to know everybody and I want to know everybody.”
And it’s not just the bus drivers that have expressed how happy they’ve been with the BRT.
“We had our customer service survey where it identified that on the Rapid Northwest here, our customer satisfaction was in the upper 90s,” Rush said. “Even our fixed route bus system is in the low 70s, which is at the national average. So when you look at customer satisfaction, our BRT is much higher than the entire nation.”
Brett Fieldcamp is the owner and Editor in Chief of Oklahoma City Free Press. He has been covering arts, entertainment, news, housing, and culture in Oklahoma for nearly two decades and served as Arts & Entertainment Editor before purchasing the company from founder Brett Dickerson in 2026.
He is also a musician and songwriter and holds a certification as Specialist of Spirits from The Society of Wine Educators.
