This month, the City of Moore posted a new episode of its own podcast, Moore's Stop, and buried in the run time is a conversation most homebuyers scanning listings will never hear: City Manager Brooks Mitchell walking residents through why Moore opted out of the region's upcoming commuter rail system. Assistant City Manager Deidre Ebrey joins the same episode to talk about changes coming to Old Town. Two threads on one podcast, and they tell you more about where Moore is actually headed than any headline about "OKC metro gets a train."
If you're comparing a house in Moore to one in Norman or Edmond right now, you've probably already run into the regional rail story. ONE Transit, the agency once known as the Regional Transportation Authority of Central Oklahoma, is moving toward a public vote on a 39-mile commuter line that would run on the existing BNSF freight corridor and connect Edmond, Oklahoma City, and Norman. It sounds like the kind of infrastructure news that should factor into a location decision. For Moore, it mostly doesn't, and understanding exactly why is more useful than either dismissing the whole project or assuming it will eventually reach you.
The club Moore was never invited to join
The plan everyone's discussing isn't new. The Regional Transportation Authority was established in 2019 when the city councils of Edmond, Norman, and Oklahoma City created it by resolution. Those are the only three member cities. Under the authority's own governance rules, each member city appoints its own board seats, with Oklahoma City getting three based on its population and tax base while Edmond and Norman get two each. Moore was never part of that founding agreement, which means it has no seat at the table and no line item in the current plan, regardless of how the referendum goes.
That's the part worth sitting with. This isn't a recent snub or a budget cut that left Moore out. It's a structural fact set in 2019, and the commuter rail line reflects it: Norman is slated for three stations plus a special event station built for OU gamedays, and the whole system is designed to link the three member cities' downtowns to each other and to the Santa Fe Intermodal Station in Oklahoma City. Moore sits just south of that map, close enough to feel adjacent to the story, structurally outside of it.
Could that change? In theory. Oklahoma statutes require dedicated funding for a project like this to come from a local sales tax, and joining would mean Moore passing its own referendum and negotiating entry into the interlocal agreement from scratch. Nothing on the current timeline suggests that's in motion.
The timeline nobody's pricing into their offer
Even for the cities that are in the plan, the schedule is longer than most buyers assume. ONE Transit still needs to finalize the exact proposal before it goes in front of voters. Speaking in February 2026, the authority's chairman, Brad Henry, said he was hopeful for a referendum sometime in early 2027, a target that a separate ONE Transit official echoed that spring when describing a vote roughly a year or so out.
Passing a referendum isn't the finish line, it's the starting gun. Asked how long construction would take after a successful vote, Henry put it plainly:
"I'd say, 7 to 10 years."
Stack those two numbers together and you get a train that, even if every deadline holds, doesn't carry its first passenger until sometime in the 2030s. That matters for how you read this story whether you're looking in Norman or Moore. A house near a future Norman station isn't buying proven transit access today, it's buying a bet on a funding vote that hasn't happened yet and a construction schedule measured in most of a decade. Meanwhile, a house in Moore isn't missing out on anything that exists yet either. The commute reality for both cities right now is the same commute reality it's been for years: I-35, arterial roads, and drive time.
What Moore is building instead
Where Moore is putting real, funded energy right now is easier to see if you look past the transit map. Moore recently landed a 330,000-square-foot McKesson distribution center just north of First Baptist Church, the result of more than a year of work by Ebrey's office and a nationwide site search by McKesson, a Fortune Top 10 healthcare logistics company currently based in Irving, Texas. The facility qualified for state grants and a five-year property tax exemption, but Moore still collects county property tax on the building itself, and Ebrey has pointed out the bigger revenue story is inside it: McKesson pays inventory tax on medical supply stock that, by her account, carries more value than what you'd find in a typical Amazon distribution center.
At the same time, Old Town Moore is getting its own round of investment, funded by a grant from the Oklahoma Department of Commerce and aimed at reviving the historic core east of I-35 at Main and Broadway, the original town site tied to the old Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe rail line before it became today's BNSF corridor. Ebrey has described a mural program identifying more than 20 walls as candidates, filling in space in a district that has churches, schools, and municipal property but limited room for new commercial buildings. As she put it:
"There's a new level of energy in Old Town with businesses that have come online lately."
None of this is transit infrastructure. It's a logistics employer and a downtown facelift, and it's happening on a timeline you can actually see, not a decade-out promise tied to a vote that hasn't been scheduled.
What this actually means if you're comparing neighborhoods
If your decision between Moore and a rail-adjacent Norman address hinges even partly on future transit access, here's the honest read. Moore's commute math today runs through the same roads it always has. Economic development materials put Moore less than 20 minutes from Will Rogers World Airport, Tinker Air Force Base, the University of Oklahoma, and downtown Oklahoma City, and that drive-time reality isn't changing because of a train that won't exist for years even in the cities that are getting one. If you're weighing a shorter commute to Tinker specifically, that calculation is worth running now on its own terms, not against a future rail line that doesn't reach Moore under any current plan.
Where the two stories diverge is in the kind of growth each city is actually funding. Norman's argument is a future rail stop tied to a vote that hasn't happened and a build-out that could stretch into the 2030s. Moore's argument is a distribution center already under construction, a downtown revitalization grant already awarded, and a population that's grown by 14% over the past decade according to the city's own economic development materials, all without waiting on a regional authority it was never part of.
Neither story should be overweighted in a 2026 offer. But if you're making a decade-plus hold decision and transit access matters to your long-term plan, know what you're actually comparing: a real but distant possibility in Norman against a structural exclusion in Moore that would require its own referendum and a new interlocal agreement to undo. That's a very different bet than "one city gets a train and the other doesn't."
FAQ
Could Moore ever join ONE Transit's system? Structurally, yes, but it would require Moore's city council to negotiate entry into the interlocal agreement and pass its own dedicated local sales tax through a referendum. Nothing on the current public timeline points to that happening.
Does any of this affect home values in Moore right now? Not directly. ONE Transit's commuter rail doesn't have a passed referendum or secured construction funding as of this year, so it isn't something to price into a 2026 purchase in either direction. Moore's more concrete growth signals right now are things like the McKesson distribution center and the Old Town investment, both already funded and underway.
If I want a shorter commute to Tinker or downtown OKC, does Moore still make sense? The drive-time fundamentals haven't changed. Moore sits within a roughly 20-minute drive of Tinker Air Force Base, Will Rogers World Airport, downtown Oklahoma City, and the University of Oklahoma, and that's the commute math worth running today rather than waiting on a rail line that isn't part of Moore's current plan.
If you're weighing Moore against Norman, Edmond, or another part of the metro and want the real commute and growth math behind each option, not just the headlines, Oak & Prairie Real Estate can walk you through it block by block. Talk with a local broker and start your neighborhood market consult before you make an offer based on a train that isn't funded yet.
