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OK: County Highway 115 Cache to Chattanooga

Started by Brian556, May 14, 2017, 03:02:13 PM

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Brian556

This designation is weird. This road starts at the former US 62/ SH 115 junction in Cache and heads south to SH 36 at Chattanooga. I checked several old maps, and found no evidence of it ever being on the state highway system.

Anybody know anything about this?

https://www.google.com/maps/@34.5954766,-98.6172152,11926m/data=!3m1!1e3

These banked curves make it look like a former SH tho:
https://www.google.com/maps/@34.5079121,-98.633493,3a,40.5y,47.44h,82.95t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1s7YyCZOWX_OCiGXIEDIs2nQ!2e0!6s%2F%2Fgeo3.ggpht.com%2Fcbk%3Fpanoid%3D7YyCZOWX_OCiGXIEDIs2nQ%26output%3Dthumbnail%26cb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile.gps%26thumb%3D2%26w%3D203%26h%3D100%26yaw%3D345.93335%26pitch%3D0%26thumbfov%3D100!7i13312!8i6656


bugo

A lot of county roads in Oklahoma are improved and function as secondary highways. In many states, a road like 115 would be a state highway, possibly a primary state highway.

Bobby5280

It is kind of strange county highway 115 isn't a state highway. Cache is attracting more people due to the disportionately high amount of funding its school district gets from big industrial park just West of Lawton. Both it and the Elgin school districts are a couple bright spots in an otherwise badly deteriorating situation for public schools across the state.

People out in Cache and other areas West of Lawton use 115 as a short cut to get to places like Chattanooga, Faxon and Frederick.

One road in the Lawton area that badly needs to be added to the state highway system is 82nd Street between SW Lee Blvd and SW Baseline Road (OK-36). A great deal of heavy truck traffic heading to/from the Goodyear, Bar-S, Silverline Plastics and Republic Paperboard factories use this road as a short cut to bypass Lawton as a connection to I-44. This part of 82nd Street is getting all beat to hell. 82nd Street from Lee Blvd up to US-62/Rogers Lane was re-built as an undivided 4 lane street years ago. But that road is mostly used by residential traffic.

I really wish Rogers Lane in Lawton could be upgraded to an Interstate quality highway with the Western end extended down to dovetail into Goodyear Blvd. That would take a giant wear and tear burden off of local streets in Lawton and county roads in the area. There is plenty of right of way available to do such an upgrade. US-62 is a freeway between OK-115 in Cache and the Rogers Lane interchange in Lawton.

Brian556

Quote from Bobby 5280:]
Quote

It is kind of strange county highway 115 isn't a state highway. Cache is attracting more people due to the disportionately high amount of funding its school district gets from big industrial park just West of Lawton. Both it and the Elgin school districts are a couple bright spots in an otherwise badly deteriorating situation for public schools across the state.

People out in Cache and other areas West of Lawton use 115 as a short cut to get to places like Chattanooga, Faxon and Frederick.

One road in the Lawton area that badly needs to be added to the state highway system is 82nd Street between SW Lee Blvd and SW Baseline Road (OK-36). A great deal of heavy truck traffic heading to/from the Goodyear, Bar-S, Silverline Plastics and Republic Paperboard factories use this road as a short cut to bypass Lawton as a connection to I-44. This part of 82nd Street is getting all beat to hell. 82nd Street from Lee Blvd up to US-62/Rogers Lane was re-built as an undivided 4 lane street years ago. But that road is mostly used by residential traffic.

I really wish Rogers Lane in Lawton could be upgraded to an Interstate quality highway with the Western end extended down to dovetail into Goodyear Blvd. That would take a giant wear and tear burden off of local streets in Lawton and county roads in the area. There is plenty of right of way available to do such an upgrade. US-62 is a freeway between OK-115 in Cache and the Rogers Lane interchange in Lawton.


I just took a vacation to Lawton:
My observations:
I was surprised that US 62 from Lawton all the way to Altus was divided given that the traffic was so incredibly light. In Texas, a highway can have 6x the volume and still be two lane.

I agree that US 62 should be a freeway all the way over to I-44.

The way US 62 exits off itself is stupid, and the signage at that location sucks.

There was no advance sign for the US 62 exit on NB I-44

I thought it was strange that Cache has such big and nice schools given that the town is so tiny and dumpy, and their street signs aren't even legible.


rte66man

Quote from: Brian556 on May 17, 2017, 11:09:14 AM
I just took a vacation to Lawton:
My observations:
I was surprised that US 62 from Lawton all the way to Altus was divided given that the traffic was so incredibly light. In Texas, a highway can have 6x the volume and still be two lane.

Politics as usual. Back in the 80's, the state senator and rep from the Altus area had lots of stroke and were able to get 62 widened from Lawton to Altus. The reasoning was........ <drumroll>... increased economic development!

It was the same group that were able to get millions wasted on 4-laning 183 from Frederick to Clinton and OK6 from Altus to Elk City. 
When you come to a fork in the road... TAKE IT.

                                                               -Yogi Berra

Bobby5280

#5
Quote from: Brian556I was surprised that US 62 from Lawton all the way to Altus was divided given that the traffic was so incredibly light. In Texas, a highway can have 6x the volume and still be two lane.

The 4-lane divided roads in the Lawton area (US-62 West of Lawton, OK-7 between Lawton & Duncan, OK-49 to Medicine Park) were upgraded from 2-lane to 4-lane mainly for safety concerns. The 4-lane upgrades of OK-7 and OK-49 were done after a number of terrible fatal head on collisions and intersection collisions took place. The OK-49 2-lane was particularly dangerous just West of I-44 as it cut through a couple of hillsides just West of the I-44 exit. These projects got the go-ahead around the time when OTA started adding the concrete median barriers to I-44, which happened not long after a multiple fatality collision near the Elgin exit.

Quote from: rte66manIt was the same group that were able to get millions wasted on 4-laning 183 from Frederick to Clinton and OK6 from Altus to Elk City.

Yeah, I remember the fantasy they were peddling: since the Eastern side of Oklahoma has US-75 four-laned and turnpiked then the Western half of Oklahoma should get the same thing via US-183. This is how the Clinton to Snyder turnpike got proposed along with another turnpike from Duncan to Davis. Both would have been roads to nowhere. The backers on this project talked about US-183 transforming into a major Mexico to Canada corridor. I remember one guy who was on the OTA board selling this idea to my civic club at one meeting. Even then I had a "WTF" reaction to it. At some point every road has to actually go somewhere. US-75 in Eastern OK is a major road because it connects two major cities, Dallas and Tulsa. That road connects more directly into the Interstate highway system. US-69 does so even better. US-183 in Western OK doesn't connect to much of anything important.

Quote from: Brian556The way US 62 exits off itself is stupid, and the signage at that location sucks.

Yeah, it's pretty cheap and it's really lousy to take at night. It's very dark. But it's fitting going into Rogers Lane, which is a terribly designed fake, wannabe Interstate. There are no shoulders and hardly any median. We had another fatal collision on that road just recently. Upgrading that road to a freeway with one or two frontage roads would not be difficult. There's plenty of ROW on the North side of the road. The existing Sheridan Road and Ft Sill Blvd exits would need little modification.

QuoteI thought it was strange that Cache has such big and nice schools given that the town is so tiny and dumpy, and their street signs aren't even legible.

The town of Cache itself is dumpy. And, yes, their Red street name signs are illegible (skinny red panels with all caps, ultra compressed lettering). Between Cache and Lawton there are several subdivisions with expensive McMansions. Those higher income families are helping push for all the improvements in Cache. The public schools in Lawton (with their lower income and non-white kids) can languish. The same kind of syndrome is going on in Elgin. People move outside of the city limits for lower tax bills (but anything goes building codes). That leaves cities like Lawton struggling with falling median incomes, a shrinking tax base and expensive liabilities, like providing public education for all military dependents while receiving nothing in terms of impact aid.



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