Posted on 12/16/2020 4:20:01 PM PST by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
Motorists will have a little more room to navigate on the Turner Turnpike near Tulsa when a nearly $45 million construction project to widen the highway and make other road improvements is completed.
The Oklahoma Turnpike Authority approved a contract this week with Sherwood Construction Co. Inc. of Tulsa to fund work on a four-mile stretch of the highway.
The project will widen the four-lane turnpike to six lanes beginning near the Creek Turnpike interchange at Sapulpa and extending east nearly to Tulsa.
The improvements will be similar to the completed widening of the turnpike to six lanes from four between Sapulpa and Bristow.
The project is expected to begin in January and be complete sometime in the summer of 2022.
The turnpike carries about 35,000 vehicles per day, according to the OTA.
(Excerpt) Read more at tulsaworld.com ...
PING!
Turner Turnpike. Was supposed to pay off and become a free road in 1954. How’s that working out?
Blame the voters of Oklahoma, who voted a long time ago to continue the tolls to create a system tolling regime for the entire Oklahoma Turnpike system.
Unlike the Illinois Tollway, the Pennsylvania Turnpike, the Chesapeake Bay Bridge, and so on, there was an actual vote that approved continuing the tolls.
Well, if the highway projects and highway expansion “did not happen” ... and instead ... just “nothing” happened — then there would have been an end to the ‘funding’.
BUT ... as long as we do more and better roads ... there is going to be a continued funding of them.
I guess it depends on whether you want nothing more to be done ... or ‘more to be done’.
Of course ... no one really “has to” drive on those roads, if they don’t want to.
I guess we could make it so that EVERYONE pays for it, or make it so that the drivers on that section of road pay for part of it. It seems more equitable for the drivers on that section of road to be the ones who pay for part of it.
It’s not just “continuing the tolls” ... it’s the expansion of the road/highway system. In other words the people wanted to expand it. It’s not that they said ... “Oh gee ... why don’t we continue paying tolls and get nothing in return” ... LOL ...
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