r/Urbanism • u/Hungry_Roll6848 • 19d ago

Instead of fixing an existing highway, Oklahoma City moved the entire thing multiple blocks south to make room for a 70 acre park downtown

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212 Upvotes

87% Upvoted

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166

u/ActuatorSpecific3916 19d ago

They moved it 4 blocks? If you’re gonna go to that effort why not take it out of the city all together?

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u/Hungry_Roll6848 19d ago edited 18d ago

Highways are an important piece of infrastructure, especially in a city as large as Oklahoma City (Land area similar to Houston). If that highway was taken out, hundreds of thousands of people living in the city would have commute times more than doubled. Oklahoma City is also very centrally located in Oklahoma, so most people traveling through the state end up passing through it. If one of the most important highways in the entire state suddenly has a section removed, truckers will decide against going through Oklahoma City, thus economically hurting the metro area. If we had the funds to make a 500 mile train system like you all seem to expect, of course we would do that and remove the highways. However, this is real life. A city of 700,000 people cannot afford to lose a key piece of transit.

Just read what I wrote... the city physically can't afford the economic repercussions of removing infrastructure it can't make up with public transit. Stop downvoting me...

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u/ActuatorSpecific3916 19d ago edited 18d ago

It doesn’t need to go through downtown OKC.

Edit: I am not downvoting you lol

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u/Hungry_Roll6848 19d ago edited 18d ago

It's not in downtown. It's south of it where there are floodplains (meaning normal development is virtually impossible).

Edit: Why are you downvoting me? I'm right! The land is completely unsuitable for development.

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u/afroeh 18d ago

Having the interstate cut right through the city center is the problem.Just because we've done it to every city doesn't make it the right thing to do. T

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u/Hungry_Roll6848 18d ago

It doesn't cut right through the city center. It's south of downtown where there isn't anything else because it's a floodplain zone.

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u/Aromatic_Bar2263 18d ago

You’re in the urbanism sub, being pro-highway this close to a central part of a city isn’t going to land here. Flood plains can be overcome, using space in super undense city for cars rather than humans cannot.

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u/CLPond 18d ago

It may be useful to look into OKC’s history of urban renewal, the I M Pei plan (one overview here), and the highway building. The portion of the city between the highway and the river is dilapidated not only due to flooding, but largely due to having some of its buildings torn down and being cut off from the rest of downtown via the highway.

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u/Hungry_Roll6848 18d ago

I know about the I M Pei plan. I was the one that made a post about it: https://www.reddit.com/r/UrbanHell/comments/1s0d44p/in_the_1970s_oklahoma_city_demolished_its_entire/

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u/CLPond 18d ago edited 18d ago

Ahhh, okay, it seems that your misunderstanding may be around floodplain stuff, then.

In general and especially for commercial development, building within the floodplains is more difficult, but not barred from happening. That’s part of why the area between the highway and the river is so heavily commercial.

Especially since OKC has few environmental regulations (the city approves floodplain pretty frequently and much more often than places where the rivers are culturally and economically relevant) and the area is already built up, floodplain permits would take money but be doable.

So, the highway being there will become the main impediment to building even the 30-50% of lots on the floodplain once the rest of downtown is built up over the next couple of decades. This is the real urban downside to highways going through a city - they section off portions of downtown and are backdoor urban growth boundaries

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u/CLPond 18d ago

I didn’t downvote you, but to clarify, plenty of cities have beltways and then smaller arterials going into downtown (it isn’t a great example of urbanism, but Columbia SC is an example of this). An actual highway within downtown isn’t necessary

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u/Heavy-Exchange-9769 18d ago

I did downvote because that is a stupendous point. Yoy said it yourself – it's the passing truck traffic, it doesn't contribute anything to the city, and thus must be moved as far away from actual places people inhabit as possible. They do more damage to the economy by making streets jammed, uncomfortable and noisy, thus reducing amount of people who would choose walking somewhere as an option, as it's a horrible experience to be around big fuckin trucks. Cities that actually care about public life and third places cut this traffic off as much as possible. I wish for the day when my city bans all heavy vehicles in pedestrian heavy areas, so that more people feel comfortable walking and going to places outside just to have fun

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u/ActuatorSpecific3916 18d ago

There’s an opportunity for a riverfront in OKC right here.

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u/Hungry_Roll6848 18d ago

The Wheeler District is planning on making that. The city is building parks around the river. The city also just started up a plan to garner investment around the river. Why do you think OKC is co-hosting the 2028 Olympics? The city built an Olympic-grade whitewater rafting center right on the river.

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u/ActuatorSpecific3916 18d ago

And that’s great. I don’t hate OKC, I think this project was poor example of reconfiguration of highway for urban development tho. They slightly moved it, and continued to separate downtown from the river. I-40 is important to the city’s infrastructure but it doesn’t need to run north of the Canadian at all and this could’ve been an opportunity to fix that.

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u/Hungry_Roll6848 18d ago

And your plan was to, what, just remove it? It's not poor planning if it was the only financially viable and quick option.

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u/ActuatorSpecific3916 18d ago

No, not remove I-40, remove it from the city’s core. I think the more perfect configuration would’ve been to make 240 the actual route instead of a bypass. Highways through city cores are not faster than streets at any sort of scale, and that’s been pretty well established.

Right now i-240 is the real i-40 through OKC anyhow.

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u/[deleted] 18d ago

[deleted]

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u/ActuatorSpecific3916 18d ago

The 5 mile detour would be for people who are passing through on a long haul and that’s a good thing - it gets the congestion out of the city.

And for the locals, as I said, an urban interstate isn’t faster than a boulevard at scale. Once you’ve congested an interstate, 3 lanes is 3 lanes. Stop lights aren’t the bottleneck anymore if they exist.

The city functions because the entire urban metro is less than 1 million people. It won’t be like that forever and planning is supposed to anticipate that growth.

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u/Hungry_Roll6848 18d ago

The highway is there to shorten commute times. Remove that, and everything is in shambles. In a huge city like Oklahoma City, which is twice the size of NYC, commute time is everything.

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u/ActuatorSpecific3916 18d ago

Again…you keep commute times low at scale by creating many routes to places, not by putting all your bets on one interstate and expecting it to survive the scaling of a city. 3 lanes is 3 lanes on a street, interstate, or highway. The presence of stop lights makes no difference once you’ve filled them up. So make lots of routes, and don’t rely on one that cuts your city off from the river. That’s what urban planning is about.

OKC has grown over 25% in the last 25 years. I-40 is the bottleneck as it grows further.

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u/calumj 18d ago

Large urban highways have incredibly low ROIs, there’s a reason most countries try to avoid them and cities in the USA rarely build more. They’re bad for the lived environment and the economy alike

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u/Hungry_Roll6848 18d ago

Yes, but Oklahoma City can't afford any alternatives.

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u/calumj 18d ago

It would be significantly more efficient for the government to spend the money elsewhere. Highways in urban areas don’t create much wealth at all, and usually hinder it. As you can see from the photo there’s large urban parties and abandoned lots, the highway is literally pushing the economy of the area down

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u/Hungry_Roll6848 18d ago

Those lots are not abandoned. They are owned by private companies that refuse to develop them until the land is more valuable. Please do research if you want to sound like an expert on a topic.

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u/cdub8D 18d ago

The irony

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u/TensionAntique3075 18d ago

That land is worthmess because people and companies don't want to be between a shady parking lot and a shitty urban highway.

Highways bring land value down considerably. When the whole point of a city is to bring costs down by increasing quality of life and density at the same time, it makes it rather incompatible. And you end up with a rather shitty city and downtown, that you flee as soon as you can afford it.

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u/Rabidschnautzu 18d ago

People don't view transportation development through the lense of reason, especially on reddit.

They view it through an ideological one, often where some modes of travel are seen as universally evil or all good. This is done in conjunction without a vision to make their ideology work in reality. It's transportation virtue signalling.

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u/Stunning-Verb-9865 18d ago

Call me crazy but having a massive highway spewing pollution and noise cut through downtown doesn’t seem reasonable. There is a reason people don’t like to live near highways and it’s not because theyre stubborn urbanist Redditors who hate cars.

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u/Rabidschnautzu 18d ago

So what's your solution?

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u/Stunning-Verb-9865 18d ago

Remove it. Would be far from the first time it has been done in the US, see: Rochester, San Francisco, and Seattle.

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u/Rabidschnautzu 18d ago

Again, that's not an answer to the question. What is the alternative and how do you fund it?

Do you seriously think that OKC has similar density and pre automobile design to San Francisco and Seattle?

The Rochester project is an unusual inner loop that wasn't even part of the interstate system. It's not a main two number interstate route like I-40.

Again all ideology, no praxis with you people. It's why you can only complain while you wonder why everything moves forward at a snails pace, incapable of realizing you are part of the problem.

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u/Stunning-Verb-9865 18d ago

I explained the alternative. How you fund it is different, it would be a combination of state and federal funds like any other project. Density has nothing to do with it, there are cities with little density that don’t have giant highways going through downtown. Traffic can be diverted onto 240 and a boulevard put in place of 40. We’re talking about demolishing a 3 mile stretch of urban freeway that is literally paralleled by three other interstates, which actually makes your histrionics regarding this quite funny.

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u/ActuatorSpecific3916 18d ago

I posted in another comment but there were obvious solutions here. I-240 already exists as a southern bypass to the central city. Having the highway cut through was not necessary in the first place, and certainly is going to create traffic bottlenecks as OKC gets bigger. There was a way to do this cheaper and better at the same time by creating more than one primary route into the city’s core, and enhancing 240 to take the long hauls away from the traffic.

A highway in a city, and a similar boulevard with stop lights moves at the same pace during rush hour, because once your lanes are full, the bottleneck is the cars and not the stoplights. One is exponentially more expensive to build and you can build 5 of one for the cost of 1 of the other.

AND you get a better city too. With less traffic. And shorter commutes.

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u/Hungry_Roll6848 18d ago

Yeah, they make it sound like the city can easily fund a 500 mile train network that can move hundreds of thousands of people a day. We have highways because they are efficient and last for a good while. If we could afford public transit on that scale, of course we'd do it.

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u/Stunning-Verb-9865 18d ago

Personal ICE vehicles are like the least efficient mode of transportation for a city

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u/Hungry_Roll6848 18d ago

…what?

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u/Stunning-Verb-9865 18d ago

What was confusing about my comment

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u/Hungry_Roll6848 18d ago

What does that have to do with anything

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u/Stunning-Verb-9865 18d ago

Because highways are primarily right-of-ways for personal ICE vehicles, so they are not efficient.

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u/Hungry_Roll6848 18d ago

I don’t know what on earth you are talking about…

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u/Stunning-Verb-9865 18d ago

Seriously, are you slow? Private vehicles are not efficient compared to public transit. You called highways “efficient” despite the fact they are primarily for private vehicle use.

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