Vision Extension - IDL Removal/Demolition

[tulsabug]

Exactly like that!  Only a couple doors away.   I have some old home movies that I am slowly scanning - one shows Mom and two kids getting onto the trolley one day.  Am also going through about 450 lbs of old family photos and I know there are some pics of the place in that, IIRC with the trolley hardware shown in the background.  I just took possession of the archives about 3 months ago or so.  Probably 15-20 thousand pics in all.!  Most loose, but about 60 large photo albums!  And one hanging family record "picture" started in about 1875.   Geez...  This takes way more time than I expected at the beginning - a 7" reel of 8mm film takes about 4 hours to digitize!   But they turn out as good as the film can possibly be, so very pleased with that!

And a 1950 Ford we had at the time.  Dad had gotten rid of the 47 Pontiac (yellow) by that time.   He circled back around in 1966 and bought another yellow Pontiac, though.

Couple of interesting highlights in film so far - several minutes of Air Force uncle who was killed a couple months later in test plane incident in San Diego.  He survived WWII and Korea as fighter pilot just to be brought down by some prototype guidance hardware on a test jet!   I met him, but don't really remember him.

And there is a drive by moment of trip through Louisiana at harvest season - showing people out in a cotton field picking cotton, dragging the long bags behind them.  Another showing sugar cane being cut by hand, and close to a field where it is being cut by one of those new-fangled harvesting machines!.   Some kind of combine mower.

If by some dumb luck you have any pics around the 11th and Yale area please lemme know.

[heironymouspasparagus]

If by some dumb luck you have any pics around the 11th and Yale area please lemme know.

Ok.  Will keep an eye out.   I spent lot of time in the area in high school.  Lots of friends went to Rogers, then lived in area for a while.   And I had one of those Polaroid Swinger cameras that I carried everywhere!   Moved up to regular Polaroid later.   Taking pics was almost a psychosis....most were crap, but there were a few that were great!

Miss this probably most of all....

Golden Drumstick;

https://www.hmdb.org/PhotoFullSize.asp?PhotoID=580772

[LandArchPoke]

Interim Study was yesterday for the IDL

https://www.kjrh.com/local-news/state-rep-goodwin-holds-study-looks-to-remove-idl-running-through-greenwood-district

It has some decent momentum building behind the idea. Strong support from the neighborhoods around the IDL and the infrastructure bill if it ever gets passed is going to have $1 billion set aside specifically for highways to boulevard projects like this. The spending bill is likely to supplement that with another $3-5 billion for the program called 'Reconnecting Communities'

https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/2833/all-info?r=2&s=1

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/house-democrats-aim-to-spend-4-billion-on-reconnecting-communities-severed-by-highways-11632407870

First time the feds are stepping up to be able to make projects like this actually feasible, not only from a funding prospective but also a policy standpoint too which was by far harder to overcome prior to this then finding funding for projects.

[SXSW]

Are there any plans or renderings that show what an at-grade boulevard would look like between 75 and 412?  I would think the first at-grade intersection on the east side would want to be Archer (and would tie-in to redevelopment of the Evans-Fintube site).  On the west side it would make sense to continue Edison eastward roughly following Easton to OSU-Tulsa then going back southeast north of ONEOK Field to Archer.

[LandArchPoke]

This is the map from the TYPROS presentation.

Red is the transition areas from highway to boulevard.
Orange is the new boulevards that replace the highway routes - shows you can still get east-west or north-south the same way you used to just on a boulevard instead (think something similar to Riverside through the Gathering Place or Peoria through Brookside with streetscaping, parking, etc.)
White is the new street grid connections

Essentially Admiral would replace 244 with 1st Street acting is a secondary back up for the same corridor too on the eastern portion of the project.

Admiral would go under the railroad around where the 244/75 interchange is now and then hook into Cameron near Greenwood then jog a bit north to Easton which would then follow that route west to around Gilcrease Museum Road or so. Through that area Edison would serve as a back up too and would be connected over to OSU Tulsa from where it ends now.

Madison would replace 75 from 11th Street to the south to the curve by Peoria to the north. Lansing would be the back up to that corridor. Highway 75 carries less than 40,000 cars per day so between Madison/Lansing expanded you can easily carry that many cars per day.

Same with the Tisdale, it carries even less than 75 and the part north of 244 is in pretty rough shape. There's really no reason for it to take up so much space and could easily be rebuilt as a boulevard and would have no impact to traffic north and south through that area.

[SXSW]

This is the map from the TYPROS presentation.

Red is the transition areas from highway to boulevard.
Orange is the new boulevards that replace the highway routes - shows you can still get east-west or north-south the same way you used to just on a boulevard instead (think something similar to Riverside through the Gathering Place or Peoria through Brookside with streetscaping, parking, etc.)
White is the new street grid connections

Essentially Admiral would replace 244 with 1st Street acting is a secondary back up for the same corridor too on the eastern portion of the project.

Admiral would go under the railroad around where the 244/75 interchange is now and then hook into Cameron near Greenwood then jog a bit north to Easton which would then follow that route west to around Gilcrease Museum Road or so. Through that area Edison would serve as a back up too and would be connected over to OSU Tulsa from where it ends now.

Madison would replace 75 from 11th Street to the south to the curve by Peoria to the north. Lansing would be the back up to that corridor. Highway 75 carries less than 40,000 cars per day so between Madison/Lansing expanded you can easily carry that many cars per day.

Same with the Tisdale, it carries even less than 75 and the part north of 244 is in pretty rough shape. There's really no reason for it to take up so much space and could easily be rebuilt as a boulevard and would have no impact to traffic north and south through that area.

This is assuming the Gilcrease Expressway Loop carries the east-west highway traffic, what about north-south on Hwy 75?  I think you have to keep the east leg of the IDL in place and if anything bury that section of highway similar to the south leg. 

In either scenario I think removing the north leg of IDL would be the most doable and highest priority

[shavethewhales]

There's absolutely no way they completely remove the highways from downtown. I don't know what the TYPROS guys are smoking, but pretending that we don't need highways at all is dumb. I guess the hard issue to overcome is tying back in to what is existing, and it's hard to tie back into the current NE corner of the IDL without leveling everything for miles like they have shown.

I think the best they'll get is leveling the north portion for a few blocks. That will remove the "barrier" while still making it possible to move around downtown via highway on the southside.

US 75 is a vital shipping route with ever increasing truck traffic, so converting it to a "boulevard" is just out of the question, IMO.

I also think in 10 years everyone will be up in arms about all these "boulevards" that didn't solve any problems. They just bring the highway traffic down to street level and make everything more congested. So-called "stroads" aren't much better for urbanism than a highway. The boulevard they added in OKC to replace the old cross town expressway is what I imagine a lot of this would look like. It's nice not having the overpasses looming over downtown OKC anymore, but the actual road itself is still a busy thoroughfare with little street interaction. You can't make every street into an urban boutique main street.

[LandArchPoke]

This is assuming the Gilcrease Expressway Loop carries the east-west highway traffic, what about north-south on Hwy 75?  I think you have to keep the east leg of the IDL in place and if anything bury that section of highway similar to the south leg.  

In either scenario I think removing the north leg of IDL would be the most doable and highest priority

244 is definitely the priority given it's impact to surrounding neighborhoods and that it's almost all elevated where you can do nothing to it like a park cap or development cap.

This is assuming the Gilcrease is fully complete on the NW portion too, then you'd designate that route from around the airport to out toward Sand Springs as I-244 and eventually whatever the new east-west Interstate will be called between NWA and I-35. The idea is that with the transportation bill not only could you get funding from the Reconnecting Communities program to decommission 244 through downtown you could likely have a really good chance to get funding to complete the NW part of the loop to interstate standard too. All of the regional east west traffic would be absorbed by either taking the north route of taking the SW part of the Gilcrease that's almost finished that hooks into I-44 and then taking it to 412 to continue east or vis versa. Taking either of those routes only adds a couple miles to a drive which is a pretty minor thing compared to what we'd gain back in redevelopable land in the urban core.

Highway 75 doesn't carry as much traffic as you think through downtown. It carries less cars per day than Riverside, 71st, Yale, Memorial, etc. so the question is do we really need the East leg either? Same with the Tisdale. Think about the redevelopment potential in the Home Depot site if 75 was brought down to a boulevard and you gained back 100-200 feet of land to the east of the site. Same thing with the land between Nordam and Pearl and East Village and Pearl. If Madison was rebuilt to at least 2 lanes each north and south similar to say Riverside or Peoria in Brookside it'd be able to handle every car that uses that portion of the IDL now, they'd just be driving 35-40 mph versus 55-60 mph and have to stop at a couple stop lights most likely. Think about how much easier it would be to redevelop the Evans site too with 75 being a boulevard versus the nightmare it is now that pretty much makes ingress and egress to that site ridiculously complicated.

The same goes for Highway 75 too, if say someone was driving from Bartlesville to I-40 as soon as they get to the Gilcrease they can take it around the west side of town and hook back into 75 at I-44 and continue south. It would add a couple miles to their trip and they'd have to pay a toll, but for what we'd gain back to me is worth it. Once the Gilcrease is complete, it makes the IDL relatively obsolete in needing to be there for multiple sections of it.

INCOG traffic count map link: https://incog.maps.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/index.html?id=8f4d62c5aecc4629a019f9cbe0076b89

#'s are cars per day:

244 @ Peoria: 65,100
244 @ Detroit: 73,797
412 @ Quanah (just west of the Tisdale): 56,787

Hwy 75 @ 11th: 24,421
Hwy 75 @ 6th: 26,342
Hwy 75 @ Archer: 38,089

Tisdale @ Edison (just north): 23,995

_______

City streets for reference:

Peoria @ 41st: 19,630-19,980
Riverside @ 31st: 20,604-20,958
Yale @ 21st: 20,883-24,420
Cherry Street @ Utica: 14,242-15,623 (Keep in mind this is 1 lane each way and it doesn't have a problem carrying 15,000 cars per day)

Just about every north/south road in Tulsa carries around 20k cars per day at various areas south of 11th Street, here's a few of the busier areas:

Riverside @ 71st: 33,020
Riverside @ Creek Turnpike: 36,125
71st @ Mingo: 33,978-34,713
71st @ Elwood: 30,782
Yale @ 51st: 28,968 - 30,866
Yale @ 71st: 25,187-26,740
Sheridan @ 51st: 26,073-28,392
Sheridan @  61st: 24,508-25,254
Memorial @ 51st: 31,992-32,960
Memorial @ Creek Turnpike: 51,249 (this street carries 2x as many cars as either the east or the west leg of the IDL)

With Memorial, even though people complain of the traffic here, you can't discount how valuable the traffic counts are to retailers & businesses in this area and how that has fostered economic growth on Memorial between the Creek and 121st - now imagine blowing through this area and widening Memorial to freeway standards and bulldozing businesses up and down the corridor. I don't think anyone would go for that, but that's what we did to downtown on an even bigger scale. 20,000-50,000 cars per day on a city street is 10x more valuable than the same amount of cars driving by on a highway. If you converted Memorial to a freeway that entire commercial area would die because 75% of the traffic that used to drive by at slower speeds now blow past the area at 65mp and you'd just see new development pop up further south. At the end of the day what is the benefit of that? To save someone 5 minutes in traffic? But in 10 years when you have 50k new people living further south, that freeway will be bumper to bumper too and you'll end up spending more time in traffic driving even further away. Induced demand does not get nearly the amount of attention it deserves and we'd be able to build better cities if we started considering that in our transportation planning.   

To the accessibility point, there's 31,159 cars per day that use the Creek Turnpike @ Aspen by Warren. That development struggled for years to convince retailers to move there because the traffic counts didn't support development (among a few other reasons too) yet 71st near Mingo along with other commercial areas that have built up have similar traffic counts. There's a huge difference when we're talking access and visibility to businesses. Traffic is actually a good thing to have and where and how that traffic has the potential to access your site is important too.

Say 100% of the cars that use 75 today took an expanded Madison, you'd instantly be able to market all that land that was given back from the old Hwy 75 right of way to retailers. You're talking about changing the game in trying to court retailers to downtown by changing the access from highways to city streets and drastically improving visibility too. A retailer can overlook rooftops if there is a road where they make up for a lack of rooftops from high traffic counts that can immediately access their property or you need enough rooftops in an area to convince retailers to locate somewhere that might not have decent traffic counts because there hasn't been commercial space built up yet.

Right now downtown has that exact issue, why would someone like an Urban Outfitters go downtown when they could locate along Peoria with more rooftops and direct frontage on a street with around 20k cars per day. They looked at several sites downtown years ago but that was the issue, eventhough the IDL like the north part that goes by the Arts District has 70k per day drive by that's irrelevant to businesses, they'd rather have the 20k cars per day going past on a direct frontage. The Evan's site and others would become 10x more valuable having 30k cars per day driving by on Lansing/Madison versus them being funneled on 75 with extremely limited ways to access the site/downtown.

[LandArchPoke]

There's absolutely no way they completely remove the highways from downtown. I don't know what the TYPROS guys are smoking, but pretending that we don't need highways at all is dumb. I guess the hard issue to overcome is tying back in to what is existing, and it's hard to tie back into the current NE corner of the IDL without leveling everything for miles like they have shown.

I think the best they'll get is leveling the north portion for a few blocks. That will remove the "barrier" while still making it possible to move around downtown via highway on the southside.

US 75 is a vital shipping route with ever increasing truck traffic, so converting it to a "boulevard" is just out of the question, IMO.

I also think in 10 years everyone will be up in arms about all these "boulevards" that didn't solve any problems. They just bring the highway traffic down to street level and make everything more congested. So-called "stroads" aren't much better for urbanism than a highway. The boulevard they added in OKC to replace the old cross town expressway is what I imagine a lot of this would look like. It's nice not having the overpasses looming over downtown OKC anymore, but the actual road itself is still a busy thoroughfare with little street interaction. You can't make every street into an urban boutique main street.

They aren't smoking anything and at no point have they ever said we don't need any highways. Just stop for a second and actually read what I've said and what they are actually proposing every single thing you just said has been addressed already. See the last comment I just posted about traffic counts, etc.

The point about the OKC boulevard is a perfect example of what NOT to do when replacing a highway. ODOT really screwed that up. The only portion that was built appropriately was the small area by the Convention Center & Scissortail Park.

Can you honestly tell me where in the world do successful cities exist that don't have congestion? Seriously...

If congestion is the economic development killer everyone acts like, how the heck do places Austin, San Francisco, NYC, DC, London, and on and on and on become so successful? It's because they are building out urban centers that are people and business focused and traffic is just an after thought. We are never going to be able to build a city where thousands of people can easily enter and exit between 8-9 am and 5-6 pm and we need to stop with that mindset and actually build a city that is built for people who live in these neighborhoods.

There is plenty of room for highways to do what they need to do, like the Gilcrease loop, etc. we just don't need regional traffic to cut through the most valuable areas of our city - we can funnel all that around the city along other regional corridors and focus access to downtown for local traffic and develop the core in a way that is beneficial to people who actually live here and not sacrifice 100s of acres of valuable land for someone from Arkansas to drive through Tulsa 5 minutes faster to get to I-35. It's just dumb economically plain and simple. Everyone wonders why we can't afford to pay teachers, police, etc. well that's why because we have turn huge swaths of our cities into highways that have done nothing for us economically in the urban core beside remove thousands of properties from the tax base.  

[SXSW]

This is definitely bold thinking which I like.  Start with 244 through Greenwood and see where it goes, you may find that people don't really miss the Highway at all

[Red Arrow]

I did some looking on Google Maps.

From I-244 and 145 E Ave to I-35 and 412 is 98.5 mi and 1:29 via the Gilcrease and Tisdale.
From I-244 and 145 E Ave to I-35 and 412 via current 412/244 and the north IDL is 94.3 mi and 1:24
Completion of the Gilcrease to 412 will make that better. 
However, tolls can be oppressive.  More later.

N-S on 75 from 36 N to 75/244 staying on 75 and the river is 6.1 mi and 6 min.
N-S on 75 from 36 N to 75/244 and the river via Gilcrease, Tisdale and the West IDL is 7.3 mi and 8 min.

Folks going from I-244 and 145 E Ave toward OKC should stay on I-44 (after construction).

People going from Midtown to Bartlesville will get screwed a bit by eliminating the East leg of the IDL.  Folks from BA/Muskogee etc can take 169 to 244 to 11 to 75.

The intersection of 11 and I-244 would need to be redesigned to make it "intuitively obvious to the most brain dead driver" that the main road is what is now 11, not the current I-244.  Dallas, TX had similar problems with 75 to I-35 E.   11 would maybe need to be expanded to 6 total lanes the whole way.  Sineage would need to be clear for non-local traffic.  I have previously related my story of "To I-44" in St Louis, MO in the early 70s.  NOT a pleasant experience.  Eliminating the north leg of the IDL would get rid of the poorly designed and signed exits to Sand Springs and destinations south.

Plate pay tolls are absurd.  I looked into a trip to the Phila, PA area to visit friends/relatives still there.  The PA TPK toll is $60 for non-EZ-Pass customers.  That is more than twice the inflation rate since 1972.  I can take free roads for the ~1300 mile/20 hr trip for an hour more.  Guess which route I would take.  No, I do not think my time is worth $60/hr.  The equivalent of the Pike Pass is about $30.  Still terrible but keeping in line with inflation.  OK TPKs are similar.  The plate pay at Peoria/Elm in Jenks is STUPID.  Although I hate Federal intervention, the electronic pay needs to be compatible across the entire USA.  If/when I go, I'll probably fly my personal plane. Avgas is expensive, currently as much as about $6/gallon (or more in some places) but I could make the trip in one day instead of two. Motels are expensive too, also about twice the inflation rate.

Summary:
I am not against the removal of the north and east legs of the IDL.  There needs to be some careful scrutiny of the effects to everyone, not just adding real estate to the city.  I do think the west and south legs of the IDL should remain in some form.  If "we" had planned better long ago, the express ways would have been farther out but changing that now is not feasible.

[DowntownDan]

Remove the north leg, and cap the east since its already mostly well below grade. That would make a huge difference.

[shavethewhales]

...
If congestion is the economic development killer everyone acts like, how the heck do places Austin, San Francisco, NYC, DC, London, and on and on and on become so successful? It's because they are building out urban centers that are people and business focused and traffic is just an after thought. We are never going to be able to build a city where thousands of people can easily enter and exit between 8-9 am and 5-6 pm and we need to stop with that mindset and actually build a city that is built for people who live in these neighborhoods.
...

I know that there are too many highways in general, and I am on board with removing parts of the IDL, but what is shown in that graphic is so beyond what anyone has asked for that it just seems bizarre to me. The idea of funneling regional traffic around the edges of the city sounds appealing, but we already have the Creek Turnpike and I44... Gilcrease might help with the north-south truck traffic, but I'm mainly concerned about the ability for thousands of downtown workers to move in and out efficiently with no mass transport system. Not to mention the oft-mentioned concerts, conventions, events, and general downtown traffic from dummies like me who go there to hang out all the time. I don't think regional through-traffic is really the issue.

Congestion IS a killer. It's why we have such a suburb culture throughout the country. Many of those cities are painful to live in, with people spending much of their lives commuting and dealing with congestion headaches. At least they have mass transit systems though, not to mention much more density than we have. Highways may have been given too much precedent, but they serve people too and it's not always a binary choice between highways and "people". People do what they can in many of those cities because they have to. Don't have much choice in NYC or DC because those are international hubs of business and government. Tulsa is Tulsa. If we had that type of congestion people would leave this city so fast that congestion wouldn't be an issue for long.

It's also worth noting that this plan essentially still calls for building more highways, but just pushing them out into ever expansive "rings", which is where sprawl really explodes. Look at how BA has sprawled out to fill in the Creek Turnpike void. Soon East Tulsa will sprawl out there too, once they can build enough sewer and water lines to accommodate all the developments that have been proposed. I know of many developers just chomping at the bit to fill up every space that can be served by a highway.

I think lowering and capping large sections of the east side of the IDL would be a better solution. Still very expensive, but something that could be done iteratively. There are already proposals to cap some of the south side. Maybe someday we'll just have a whole network of underground car pipelines around the central part of the city. 

[Red Arrow]

but I'm mainly concerned about the ability for thousands of downtown workers to move in and out efficiently with no mass transport system. Not to mention the oft-mentioned concerts, conventions, events, and general downtown traffic from dummies like me who go there to hang out all the time. I don't think regional through-traffic is really the issue.

I believe there are many on this forum that want those thousands of workers to move to downtown.  The problem with that would be that housing would still probably be farther from work than a lot of workers would want to walk.

[swake]

US-412 is being upgraded to an interstate so through traffic downtown is going to have to be maintained for both the new interstate designation and I-244.

The north leg could be converted to a surface street, but because of the railroad on the east side of I-244 on the IDL and the 244/412/Tisdale interchange on the west side at best you could get an at level boulevard from Detroit to Boulder. You would get maybe four whole blocks of at at level street at a cost I am sure north of $100 million.  Anything more would take redoing the interchanges on the east and west of the north leg at $250-300 million each. If you really want to remove the whole north leg you are looking at a cost approaching a billion dollars in a state that can't maintain highways. And you would be removing a highway that was just completely rebuilt.

I get wanting to do this, I am sympathetic, but Greenwood's commercial district downtown is already completely gentrified and is not ever going to be a new version of Black Wall Street. Half a billion or so in development the last decade has killed that idea.

Also to me the I-244 bridge over Greenwood is an important monument/example of the 60s/70s era destruction of the second iteration of Black Wall Street.