Core to Shore featured on Infrastructurist.com
August 6th, 2009Infrastructurist.com recently featured Oklahoma City’s I-40 realignment and accompanying Core to Shore plan in a post entitled 7 Urban Freeways To Tear Down Today–And What Tomorrow Might Look Like If We Do. Below is the blurb on OKC:
Oklahoma City: I-40
The capital of the Sooner state isn’t getting rid of I-40, but it is doing away with the elevated section–which has cut through downtown since 1965. The new highway will be much less intrusive, situated below street level in an old rail right of way, while a much smaller surface street will trace the path of the old I-40.
The best part of OKC’s plan, however, has nothing to do with transportation. Rather, the municipal government will use the highway teardown as the basis for a full-scale urban renewal, adding new parks and denser development in a 1,375-acre zone between downtown and the Oklahoma River.
The plan doesn’t include many provisions for public transportation though, which is a shame–but losing the elevated roadway remains a big step in the right direction.
Before:
After:
August 6th, 2009 at 12:28 am
I like how the ‘before’ picture doesn’t even show I-40…
Inaccurate pub is always better than no pub, though!
August 6th, 2009 at 2:00 am
touche…I should have caught that.
August 6th, 2009 at 8:33 am
I’m glad JRoy said something because I was thoroughly confused. I am, however, still slightly confused. Can you tell me the orientation for these images? Also, what is the source of the “after” plans?
August 7th, 2009 at 6:09 pm
The first view is looking SSE down Shields Blvd (the bottom of the pic would be where the current I-40 is). The second view is looking NNE. You can find plenty about Core to Shore on http://www.okc.gov.
August 7th, 2009 at 8:50 pm
[...] (Spotted by Blair Humphreys.) [...]
August 30th, 2009 at 8:49 am
The new highway is actuall just below grade. It is going to look funny with the crossing streets having really high bridges over the interstate. The engineers planning the interstate forgot to take into account the level of the ground water close to the river.
Also, they are planning to replace the 6 lane interstate with a just as obtrusive 6 lane boulevard. I don’t see how this will benefit the city.
January 24th, 2011 at 9:06 pm
“The engineers planning the interstate forgot to take into account the level of the ground water close to the river. Also, they are planning to replace the 6 lane interstate with a just as obtrusive 6 lane boulevard. I don’t see how this will benefit the city.”
What are you proposing they forgot. It is still twenty feet above the water level even though it is ‘below grade’ in parts. Some key reasons to put the bridges over the interstate instead of the other way round is it causes far fewer accidents on the interstate with winter weather where people are traveling at higher speeds than city streets and causes more problems when those accidents occur, it also makes it easier to repair the bridges in 30 to 50 years when they will need to be worked on. Other benefits are you exit up so you get natural deceleration, enter going down with natural acceleration, they can place sound walls in and realistically their is not enough room in downtown to change the train track elevation so it simplifies the bridges to keep the rail tracks and interstate lanes at or very near each others grade.
The benefits are the current structure is flat dangerous even if it did not have chunks one foot to three feet in diameter falling out every six months to a year. It does not have enough lanes for the capacities it carries, it has no break down lanes, the entrance & exit rams along with merge zones are all very short, placements of the entrance & exit ramps were not great to begin with and it was built with a current design was banned from use in the 70’s. Since the current crosstown needed major repair and be brought some where near current interstate standards something had to be done, trying to jam a solution through the same path would have cost billions, taken much longer and be even more destructive to urban planing that current system. I am not saying it should not have done a few things better, leaving more room near union station for it’s railhead would have been better in the long run, however given foreseeable investment mass transit that may not really matter anyway. The people passing the metro will now be routed around, their is more uniform access to downtown with the business loop that replaces the crosstown, millions of dollars is being spent along with the building, the investment in infrastructure brings in businesses and investors from outside the city.