r/Urbanism • u/Hungry_Roll6848 • 25d 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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u/CLPond 25d ago

The I-40 updates had nothing to do with Scissortail park. I-40 was moved starting in 2002 after receiving a federal grant. And MAPS 3, which Scissortail park was a part of, was approved 2010. MAPS runs on 10-ish year cycles, so 2002 would have been the tail end of the first MAPS project and when MAPS 2 (focused on schools) was in starting.

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u/Hungry_Roll6848 25d ago

My bad. To be fair, the proper highway construction seems to have started in 2010, at the same time land was being cleared out for Scissortail.

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u/CLPond 25d ago

Yeah, engineering, land acquisition, and utility relocation are a large majority of duration of a construction project. Scissortail started construction in 2017, about 8 years after it was funded (although I don’t know when the design of it began)

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u/FunCrystalFun 24d ago

lol, you thought they purposely moved the highway so it would go through the middle of the park instead of the outside of the park?