After 25 years of planning, eight years of construction, many heated city council and transportation meetings, and $120 million in public funding, the highly anticipated Oklahoma City Boulevard finally opened to drivers on Monday.
The event was cause for a huge ribbon cutting, with the mayor and the governor in attendance. The Thunder Drummers were even there to mark the occasion, which is strange because I was pretty sure they all got traded to the New York Knicks or something.
Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt, right, plays with the @okcthunder Thunder Drummers before he speaks at the opening of the Oklahoma City Boulevard in downtown OKC. Photo is copyright © 2019 Alonzo Adams. #alonzoadamsphotography #kevinstitt @GovStitt #thunderdrummers @OKDOT pic.twitter.com/S9RhMoFRPc
— Alonzo Adams (@AlonzoJAdams) August 19, 2019
Although the Boulevard opening should have been a celebration for all downtown commuters, all is perhaps not well with the thoroughfare.
Steve Lackmeyer, the only journalist in town who is pessimistic enough to rival TLO, went on a Twitter spree about the dangers of the road. Apparently, the geniuses in charge of the project forgot to put up fundamental, take-for-granted road things like traffic lights and stop signs.
I’ll save you the tweets and instead share a little from the article he wrote for The Oklahoman:
Travelers hitting the new Oklahoma City Boulevard on Tuesday encountered a new major corridor with no working traffic lights and limited views at a two-way crossing at Walker Avenue.
By noon, changes already were underway, but drivers will face another month before all of the signs and traffic signals for safe travel will be completed.
State, city and civic leaders led by Gov. Kevin Stitt and Mayor David Holt gathered in 101-degree heat Monday to cut the ribbon and open the boulevard to traffic after years of planning and construction.
But during the first morning rush hour on Tuesday, street signs were missing and stop signs were used for four-way stops except at Walker Avenue, where drivers in the inside lanes, with cars in adjoining lanes, had limited or no view of crossing traffic.
Meanwhile, pedestrians were struggling to cross the boulevard between Western and Shartel Avenues.
He’s got a point. We can wait eight years to finish construction on the damn road, but not another month or so to install traffic and pedestrian lights? That would be like moving into your new Ideal Home before they finished installing the crown molding and fixtures.
After Lackmeyer shined his Holt signal towards the cloud, our mayor jumped on the scene to investigate, selfie stick at hand and ready to use.
This is the current scene at the most problematic intersection – Walker and the Boulevard. @OKCPD are here monitoring while @OKDOT & @cityofokc coordinate the installation of a well-marked four-way stop. pic.twitter.com/30PEIZRRmr
— Mayor David Holt (@davidfholt) August 20, 2019
Naturally, he blamed ODOT for the gaffe.
@okdot has been pressuring us to schedule the ceremony so they could open it. They would have had the ceremony weeks ago if we could have found a date that works. I defer to @okdot as to the readiness of the road but I can assure you the ceremony did not rush the opening.
— Mayor David Holt (@davidfholt) August 20, 2019
Uhm, couldn’t you have just said “No, the road’s not ready?” The way Holt describes it, ODOT is the mayor from Jaws – “Why, there’s no safety issue here, none at all! If I don’t see this road full of cars by the middle of August, it’ll ruin this town!”
So how bad is this road?
Our intrepid editor Patrick took his life into his own hands and made a brave quest to travel the fearsome road. Watch his video if you dare:
Driving down the extremely dangerous OKC Boulevard! Don’t try this at home! https://t.co/pEZD9VyHP8
— The Lost Ogle (@TheLostOgle) August 20, 2019
We checked with Patrick’s family. He’s home recovering and doing fine.
In all seriousness, roads in the area were a mess during the morning commute:
The @cityofokc and @OKDOT announced the opening of the long-awaited OKC Boulevard yesterday. But here at the intersection of that road and Walker we’ve seen multiple close calls with drivers confused oher whether or not to go pic.twitter.com/vJGCkUTG02
— Dillon Richards (@KOCODillon) August 20, 2019
Yeah, that looks pretty irresponsible. A huge four-way crossing with little rinky dink stop signs that you have to squint to see? Why even bother with the stop signs anyways? Just make the intersection run on the honor system and let people pass whenever they feel like it.
Anyway, they better hurry up and get this stuff fixed, before someone gets seriously hurt or dies. Plus, I imagine the Boulevard will be getting tons of traffic soon. Not only because of the location, but also because Okies will drive on a road simply because it’s there. That’s what we do…instead of going to parks or taking strolls through the neighborhood.
I watched the entire vid… Didn’t turn the sound on till towards the end..lol Caught me off gaurd😜
Patrick – what a drama queen!! If that’s the most “terrifying” road you’ve ever driven, you are living a VERY sheltered life and probably need to get out more! 4 way stops are a way of life, and so are through roads with side streets stopping. You act like that’s the first time you’ve ever seen them and you’re scared to death. Seriously!!??? And your comment about no businesses – it’s brand new. You think businesses are going to invest in a road that’s not there. It takes time. Do you not remember what the Bricktown area looked like when it started? Get a life!!
Thank you for taking a video that lampooned the hysteria very seriously!
Ken must be new to The Lost Ogle. Satire and sarcasm is the normal style here.
Or maybe he’s a regular, and is merely irony-challenged.
Or is Ken the one being ironic, and it’s me who is missing the point?
Who can tell? Down is up, up is down.
Not new – love irony. Heard no irony in this post just downright ugly criticism! Huge difference between irony and criticism. Irony should be funny and make us laugh. Criticism is not needed – there’s plenty of that to go around and all it does in us is make us restless. I stick by my comments.
“Or maybe he’s a regular, and is merely irony-challenged.”
Nailed it!
dat check engine light tho, Patrick…
Shut up, Ken.
There’s a grown up response. Thanks for playing Frankenberry.
This debacle appears to explain the promise of the mayor and governor to run their respective governmental agencies “more like a business”. What do businesses do when they screw up? They blame another department. City blames the state, state blames the city when things go wrong. Public sides with whichever politician they currently like.
All politicians do is administer, they don’t do the actual work of installing stop signs or traffic lights. They simply tell someone to do it, and then tell someone else to make sure it was done. When it doesn’t work they make a lot of noise about building in safeguards to make sure they can’t screw up in the future.
Not sure why the road had to open on a day when it was over 100 degrees, and there weren’t working stoplights or even stop signs installed. I can’t imagine how another week or month would have mattered after the years they have been working on it. Perhaps it was the only day the Thunder Drummers, the Mayor, and the Governor all had a few hours open.
I’m beginning to think Mayor Holt is a “read, fire, aim” kind of guy.
The purpose of a business is to make profits for its owners. Period.
This usually includes producing products as cheaply as they can get by with, and cutting contracted services – and customer service -to the bone to reduce expenses. Which is great if you’re a business owner, not so great if you’re a customer unable to take his business elsewhere.
Keep this in mind the next time you hear a politician promise to “run government like a business.”
There is really nothing going on downtown right now either that it had to be open before it’s ready. I’m sure the Chris Brown Concert is going to cause a bottle neck downtown cause the boulevard is still closed. The next event at the area isn’t until Sept 13th. Dodger season is almost over. The Park and Thunder don’t start until Oct. Sept 1st would of been a better start date.
So, Reno just wasn’t good enough. Fine. I guess if you’re driven everywhere with a police escort you wouldn’t know there were no traffic signals either.
The road is a complete cluster. Not only is not complete, they’re already planning to tear it up in Bricktown and move the intersection by Harkins closer to the rail bridge. Which means that intersection will be closer to another traffic signal that already works at the intersection of Shields. There was no need for this road to be built. The only people that wanted it were those in power that work downtown and wanted a “quick” way to get home to the ‘burbs. The downtown traffic flow was already fine before this road was opened.
I like how the City’s idea to fix one part of the road was to install a No Left Turn sign during the middle of the day, then have a traffic officer on a bike to “remind” drivers that you can’t turn left at that particular area. Anything for buck.
I totally agree Thompson. With all of your points!
I would much rather have intersections without signage than those rage-cry-inducing roundabouts by St. Anthony Hospital. I would also rather ride a water slide made of cheese graters than read another item by Steve Lackmeyer.
I like the roundabouts because if anything they make the typical Okie pause (with the hamster slowly spinning on the wheel in their brain) and think about how they should proceed next, rather than blatantly glide through stop signs without caution.
I’m totally with you on this.
Stop, check left, yield and turn right. Wow, that was difficult.
kind like the onramp logic should only have one command: punch it, motherfucker!
Actually, the same logic applies to both situations. Roll up, yield, jam on.
For the love of sanity….you nailed it on that one.
And what’s with these god damned white plastic barriers at the off ramps around Penn and Western on memorial. JFC! As if the traffic backups weren’t bad enough on the streets, now it musical stupids all the way back to the turnpike.
Those are there to keep the assholes from rolling down the exit ramp at 75 and trying to make a stab, across 2 lanes and into the shopping center parking lot, located at a 90* angle from the end of the fence barrier, that guards the off ramp. It has succeeded in that, but moved the problem a little farther down, as the same assholes now try to cross 3 lanes to turn north on Penn.
Are you asking Oklahoma City drivers to make independent decisions?
I hate to say it but the way DPS hands out driver’s licenses, a lot of drivers are worse than cars with a smart cruise control. Which should be scary because even Tesla’s smart cruise control is crap compared to a human driver who actually gives a shit.
Will they be adding those green bike lanes to to this boulevard?
It already is pedestrian and bike friendly according to a Chamber of Commerce Shill.
https://journalrecord.com/2019/08/20/oconnor-boulevard-opening-creates-new-development-opportunities/
But the real purpose of the $120 million road is so that the Oklahoma City Economic Development Trust can sell the four acres it has that used to be a Goodwill site. The area is marketed as the “Core to Shore” reinvestment area.
Anybody who says that’s a complete street should be forced to commute by foot or bicycle for a year on it.
Remember when this was originally designed to be a complete street tied together by a roundabout? How’d we replace a freeway with a surface expressway?
Because ODOT, who only knows how to build highways/freeways/expressways, was in charge.
Sad but probably accurate. Worse was the awesome design they started with also came out of ODOT. Reminds me of how Tulsa started out with plans to bring Eugene’s EmX to Tulsa but then got chickenshit about priority signaling, stop frequency, dedicated bus lanes and everything else that basically makes it a streetcar that can get around an obstacle, and instead make it…just the same shit it’s replacing.
For someone that grew up in the 40&50 in downtown okc this amazing . What a beautiful street this is & when lighting & landscaping signal lights and the Hotel are done this is something we all Oklahoman can be proud of . Thanks to all that payed the tax and a special thanks Ron Norick and all the okc employees that made this possible. Yours truly Bud Nave
I enjoyed the write up & video commentary both! Running the intersection on the honor system sounds pretty badass!
I’ve never heard Patrick’s voice. It sounds different than I expected.
It’s like we had the chance to get an amazing, beautiful figure skater so ODOT built us a goalie.
Oh, yeah, the Oklahoman reported that the Contractor will receive a $500,000 bonus for finishing the job a month early.
How do we know the City didn’t just forgot to budget or plan for stoplights or signage? Being from Enid I would easily consider that a possibility.
Because it’s a state highway, so it would have been OklaDOT’s failure at planning.