More Talk about the “Oklahoma City Boulevard”
An early conceptual rendering of the future boulevard in Oklahoma City's "Core to Shore"
In an ideal world, one wishes they could have 100 inches, maybe more, to tell some stories. That’s the case with my story Sunday about the controversy over the design of the new “Oklahoma City Boulevard.”
Here are some interesting quotes on the topic that didn’t make it into print:
“I don’t know that I have a preference. I heard some council people talk about the difficulty putting in a traffic circle to keep it at grade. Putting in a traffic circle will not get you out of town quickly. If you think the new I-40 has hindered egress quicker, then you need to put it at above grade. If you think aesthetics are important … then we need to keep it at grade … one of the things that concerns me is we’re making a whole lot of decisions and I-40 itself isn’t done yet. There are a whole lot of things yet to come on line that will help with functionality. My worry is that we’re jumping to conclusions it will stay the way it is and we have a number of ramps that have yet to open. So how do we know how difficult it will be to get in and out of downtown?”
- Ward 1 Councilman Gary Marrs
“I hope the boulevard is not elevated to the best of our ability. I’m not an engineer. But I hope to see it at grade as much as possible. There are some fabulous stuff in that area. The idea of creating a boulevard 10 years ago when we first started talking about this was to create a pedestrian friendly area in this dilapidated land when we put the new I-40 into it.”
- Ward 6 Councilwoman Meg Salyer
“I don’t think it should be elevated at all. I think it should be on the ground all the way. If you want to slow traffic down, why build this road up on stilts with no stops? People won’t go 45 miles per hour on that – they’ll go 70. I think we need to hold (ODOT) Directly Ridley to his word that he won’t build a boulevard we don’t want.”
- Ward 4 Councilman Pete White
“I would prefer it at grade. All of the famous boulevards in the world … they’re at grade. People can walk on those boulevards. You can’t walk on an elevated road. You can’t have people stop at a restaurant; go for a cup of coffee on an elevated highway. You destroy the purpose of a boulevard if it’s elevated. I was under the impression there will be some discussions on the design of the boulevard and whether we can have a traffic circle. There are a lot of questions still unresolved in my mind.”
- Ward 8 Councilman Pat Ryan
“Life changes. And this isn’t the same city it was when Alternate D was chosen in 1998. We’re doing some things to address that. There was no Lower Bricktown, there was no new convention center, streetcar, central park. And we’re working with ODOT to accommodate all the things that are going on downtown.”
- City Manager Jim Couch
“Our goal is to complete this project by the end of 2014. You have to hit certain mile stones to make that happen, and we’ve been in talks with the city to make that happen. There should be no surprise we are working expeditiously to make these connect complete to downtown. We’ve been at this quite a long time. We’re moving forward because no one has told us to stop. And why would we stop?”
- Oklahoma Department of Transportation Director Gary Ridley
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Comments
It would be nice to blame ODOT, but considering this remarkable consensus, any undesirable outcome could only be blamed on the council’s failure to back these statements with action.
The Council needs to say STOP if they want the boulevard to be done correctly. This lies with the Council.
Here’s a new idea – put the Boulevard underground from Compress to Walker. Under the BNSF tracks, intersecting with Shields/Gaylord, serving the Arena parking garage and the new convention center via it’s underground parking garage (a la the Cox Center). Pedestrians can walk unobstructed from the new convention center to Central Park; underground parking would provide access to the Myriad Gardens as well. All the vaunted new retail business activity along the Boulevard would be built either in South Bricktown or west of Walker. It wouldn’t be cheap, but it solves several problems, and there’s enough room to do it.
“We’re moving forward because no one has told us to stop.”
That’s some hell of criteria to meet to have something done in this city. Do it until someone says stop.
Well I think from the reader’s comments on here someone finally is telling them to stop. Now will they listen or continue to do whatever they want to do?