Driving the highway to and from Oklahoma City can be a stressful adventure. Oklahoma does not exactly have the best drivers, and our roads are usually in awful shape.
In an attempt to reduce traffic across a growing Norman and Oklahoma City, officials have decided to widen Interstate 35 by adding lanes. Construction first began in 2002 and has continued on and off even to this day. The total costs of all the projects have been estimated to be around $250 million from 2002-2008.
Currently, State Highway 77’s exit to and from I-35 is closed off, limiting the only options drivers have who do not like to drive on the busy and constantly weaving interstate. In addition, there are barely, if any notifications for many of the blocked entrances and exits to I-35. I, myself, have been frustrated on numerous occasions by having to drive miles out of my way in order to get on I-35.
The construction company has said that the construction could take anywhere from 18-30 months to complete before they begin on a six-year project to focus on portions of I-35 south of Main Street in Norman, which seems like an awfully long time to have such a potentially dangerous situation. Parts of the highway are reduced to only one lane with barracks on both sides; it takes one car to stall, over-correct or blow out a tire to cause a serious accident.
Maybe instead of starting up construction on three or four different sites along the highway, the crew could just focus on one part at a time. That way any construction would last just a few miles, instead of the whole highway. It may take a little while, but having construction over a major highway for such a long stretch is endangering drivers.
The highway from Norman to Oklahoma City is a very important one for many college students. Many alumni who get jobs in Oklahoma City stay in Norman because of the cheaper housing and college-town atmosphere, among other things. Many travel daily up and down I-35. While I agree that I-35 does need to expand, there is no point of rushing things if it makes it nearly an unbearable journey now.
If they have to do construction for such a long period of time, then workers should still leave at least two full-sized lanes for both sides. I do not really see the point of bringing traffic to a near stand still for six years in hopes that afterwards our new six-lane highway will reduce traffic until the need for eight lanes.
Instead, we should reduce back the projects to only work on one smaller portion of the highway at a time. Even if it takes longer, motorists would not have to suffer a one-lane highway for part of their journey.
-Dara Mirzaie is a economics senior.
The Oklahoma Daily is pleased to provide you the opportunity to share your thoughts about this article. We encourage lively debate on the issues of the day, but we ask you refrain from using profanity or other offensive speech, engaging in personal attacks or name-calling, posting advertising, or straying from the topic at hand. To comment, you must be a registered user of OUDaily.com. Thanks for taking the time to offer your thoughts.
You must be logged in to leave a comment. Log in | Register
TheJR 2 years, 10 months ago
No joke, having a barricade on your right, a weaving semitruck on your left, and boxed in by cars behind and in front of you... now that's just not safe at all.
majid 2 years, 10 months ago
i don't know anything about road construction, but if it creats job for 6 years ,let it be.
JJanowiak 2 years, 10 months ago
The whole thing is a little reminiscent of Tulsa's project to widen 75 near the 71st exit in anticipation of all the stores going up. I think the primary danger comes from having barricades on either side as you're forced to move to move to the opposite side of the highway. Honestly it isn't too bad on I-35 but the turn was unbearably sharp on 75 and there was constantly debris (not to mention animal carcasses) up against the curves. I even witnessed an accident once.
One thing I don't see in your editorial is any accident data. If there haven't been any major accidents that can be attributed to construction then you don't have a strong argument for forcing the state government to lose money on a less efficient construction plan. It is frustrating what poor shape the open road is in, though. One lane has some kind of bumpy depression along its side while the other drops off. They could have at least anticipated how pitted out the open road would be before closing off the other one.
anti 2 years, 10 months ago
The highway construction currently underway between Norman and OKC is moving fairly rapidly. I-35 to 77 is now fully open and working. That took hardly any time at all, and I think 77 will start acting as a detour for I-35 as the construction moves south. Also, if I-35 is under construction and you need to go somewhere, take a moment to check the traffic ( http://newsok.com/weather scroll down half the page, there's a traffic map ). Sooner RD is always a viable second option.
I've only noticed it being one lane at night when they are maneuvering the barricades to close or re-open parts of the highway.
Not sure if you have lived in any major cities before, but the construction is moving much faster here than most places.
The traffic from it doesn't even begin to compare to everyday traffic in cities like Houston, Dallas, or Seattle.
Also, there are quite a few highway projects underway throughout the metro area (I-44/Heffner Parkway, I-235, I-35, I-40 Crosstown). And tons of roads are being rebuilt throughout OKC. This is good stuff, plenty of people are working and our cities infrastructure is improving. So why nit-pick over construction? Were you late getting to Warren and missed the previews?