The Oklahoma Department of Transportation has rejected a proposal championed by residents of Oklahoma City to replace a highway segment with an interconnected street grid.
Last year, a coalition that includes City Council Member Ed Shadid prevailed on the Federal Highway Administration to compel Oklahoma DOT to consider the consider the highway-street-grid idea, in addition to the various highway-like at-grade roads the agency had proposed.
Given that advocates had to force the issue, it's not surprising that Oklahoma DOT is back with its final recommendations for the project, and the agency didn't score the grid concept too highly. Instead, the DOT wants to build a high-speed, four-lane road without the added street connections advocates want.
The grid concept was by far the cheapest to construct and would have opened up the most acres for development, but it lost points for having lower level of service -- a measure of motor vehicle delay at intersections. Oklahoma DOT's "preferred alternative" will cost three times as much to construct and open up 62 percent less land for development.
Gotta move those cars, the agency essentially wrote in its environmental assessment [PDF]:
A primary purpose of the Crosstown Boulevard is to help restore connections that were lost when I-40 was relocated south to its current location. As a result, the Crosstown Boulevard should be easy to drive with little delay which allows for easy access for conducting downtown business while accommodating the planned vision of the downtown area.
OKC residents hope to build a walkable, mixed-use neighborhood on 700 acres in the hollowed out Core to Shore area that the road passes through.
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