Lawton, OK badly needs a SPUI

[Bobby5280]

The intersection of Gore Blvd. and I-44 has the worst traffic issues in the Lawton-Fort Sill area. On top of that the outdated design of its bridges has created a dangerous and now deadly situation. The interchange needs to be radically redesigned or completely replaced with a Single Point Urban Interchange.

Yesterday, a pedestrian was hit by a car just South of the Gore Blvd. interchange. A mother and her young, adult daughter were trying to cross I-44 on foot. The younger lady was hit and later died of her injuries at a Lawton hospital. Here's a link to a news story about it.
http://www.kswo.com/story/28401170/woman-hit-by-car-critically-injured
This isn't the first time a pedestrian has been hit and killed on I-44 by the Gore Blvd. interchange. Other pedestrian fatalities have occurred.

The problem is the Gore Blvd. bridges over I-44. They have no functional sidewalks on the bridges. They're little more than just street curbs. If you want to walk across or ride a bicycle across you'll run a good chance of getting clipped by a car's side view mirror.

The interchange is horribly inefficient at moving traffic. There are three traffic lights in short succession along Gore Blvd. There are two on either side of I-44 and another traffic signal at the entrance into Best Western Hotel & Comanche Nation Casino. Gore Blvd. is by far the primary arterial road moving traffic between Lawton's West and East sides. The intersection at I-44 is a major choke point. All the traffic lights lead to some heavy back-ups.

A SPUI would solve both problems. It would eliminate one of the three traffic lights along Gore Blvd. The through traffic signal on Gore could be timed with the light by the Comanche Nation Casino entrance. A SPUI would have bridges wide enough to hold sidewalks for pedestrians and bicyclists. It would cut down or completely eliminate the jay-walking problems present on I-44 between the Gore & Lee Blvd. exits.

There still may be a need for a pedestrian bridge over I-44 halfway between the Gore Blvd. and Lee Blvd. exits, but I think that is a project that should be funded in part or whole by Comanche Nation Casino itself. Its customers are the ones jay-walking across I-44 in that area. People jay-walking across I-44 closer to the Gore Blvd. interchange could be hoofing it to Apache Casino, but they might also just be walking to/from a different destination in East Lawton.

[NE2]

SPUIs are horrible for peds.

[Bobby5280]

A SPUI isn't the best thing for pedestrians due to the greater number of crosswalks. But a SPUI at I-44 & Gore Blvd. in Lawton would create a much safer situation for everyone than what exists now. The SPUI is still badly needed because of all the traffic issues.

Pull up Street View for this location in Google Earth and Google Maps and take a look at what passes for a "sidewalk" on the Gore Blvd. bridges across I-44. It's a freaking joke. They're just street curbs barely wide enough to hold a road cone. The two most recent pedestrian deaths in Lawton on I-44 took place just South of the interchange. My guess is if the two Gore Blvd. bridges over I-44 had properly wide sidewalks those fatal car & pedestrian accidents would never have happened.

[jeffandnicole]

There still may be a need for a pedestrian bridge over I-44

Well, this would solve the pedestrian issue at least.

Clearly, there's a ped/bike issue here.  I'm not sure though why people would think crossing I-44 would be better than staying on the overpass.

However, I don't know if a SPUI would solve the issue, especially with the other nearby intersections.  Traffic lights could be retimed now to make traffic flow better.  And putting in a SPUI may cause one of the other nearby intersections to require a traffic light, so you wouldn't have an overall reduction of traffic lights.   

A SPUI isn't the best thing for pedestrians due to the greater number of crosswalks. But a SPUI at I-44 & Gore Blvd. in Lawton would create a much safer situation for everyone than what exists now. The SPUI is still badly needed because of all the traffic issues.

But your main argument starts with the pedestrian issue.

[Bobby5280]

And putting in a SPUI may cause one of the other nearby intersections to require a traffic light, so you wouldn't have an overall reduction of traffic lights.

There is already a traffic light at the intersection of Gore Blvd. and Lawrie Tatum Road (the intersection that already provides the entrance into Best Western Plus Hotel and Comanche Nation Casino). That signal light is only a couple hundred feet away from the Gore Blvd traffic signal on the East side of the I-44 & Gore Blvd. interchange.

The City of Lawton has tried timing the two signal lights on Gore Blvd for I-44 and the 3rd signal light for the Comanche Nation Casino entrance. Unfortunately there's enough traffic that the timing alone fails to work.

Any traffic leaving I-44 and turning left doesn't have enough time to get through both signals at either end of the bridges over I-44, much less get past the 3rd signal when traveling Eastbound on Gore boulevard. Lots of cars just end up stuck. The situation is aggravated worse by other driver related factors, such as inattentive driving (people texting & checking Facebook on their phones, etc.). Lawton-Fort Sill is home to a rather large population of retirees. Many of those folks love driving really slow and being very hesitant with driving decisions. All of it adds up to very serious congestion.

If you look at a map of the Lawton-Fort Sill area you'll see there are no reasonably good alternative routes to using Gore Blvd. if you want to drive from Lawton's West side to its East side. Most of it gets funneled through the Gore Blvd. interchange. Lee Blvd. is the nearest alternative route, but there is no direct way to get to it, not with how the streets in and near downtown Lawton are arranged. Cache Road is Lawton's busiest street, but it dead ends at I-44 in a freeway style interchange. It doesn't go through to the East side segment of Cache Road due to all the tribe-owned land and some buildings in the way. You have to go 2 miles North to Rogers Lane.

Over the past several years a few hotels and other businesses have sprouted up in the immediate area of the I-44 & Gore Blvd. interchange. That has increased traffic levels in the immediate area alone. But adding more signal lights isn't necessarily the answer. I think it would only make the traffic jams worse. Instead, some of the left turn movements across Gore Blvd. probably should be eliminated.

[jeffandnicole]

I was referring to the intersections to the west of the interchange; there's a few in succession that are not signalized currently.

[bugo]

Lawton-Fort Sill is home to a rather large population of retirees. Many of those folks love driving really slow and being very hesitant with driving decisions.

They shouldn't be driving if they're a danger to others.

I don't know if it's a geezer thing as much as an Oklahoma thing. Okies are the slowest drivers I've ever come across.

[aboges26]

Lawton-Fort Sill is home to a rather large population of retirees. Many of those folks love driving really slow and being very hesitant with driving decisions.

They shouldn't be driving if they're a danger to others.

I don't know if it's a geezer thing as much as an Oklahoma thing. Okies are the slowest drivers I've ever come across.

They like to stop in the acceleration lane before merging into traffic when getting onto freeways.  Not sure whether they were a geezer or just an Okie, but it about scared the piss out of me the first time I drove across Oklahoma and was taking the cloverleaf ramp from I-40 east to I-235 north.  I thought that it was common knowledge that even if there is traffic on the main lanes to keep moving and MERGE.

[Scott5114]

Lawton-Fort Sill is home to a rather large population of retirees. Many of those folks love driving really slow and being very hesitant with driving decisions.

They shouldn't be driving if they're a danger to others.

I don't know if it's a geezer thing as much as an Oklahoma thing. Okies are the slowest drivers I've ever come across.

When I lived in southwest Missouri I found the drivers there were a lot slower than in Oklahoma. At 70mph I was usually the fastest one on the road.

[yakra]

They like to stop in the acceleration lane before merging into traffic when getting onto freeways.  Not sure whether they were a geezer or just an Okie, but it about scared the piss out of me the first time I drove across Oklahoma and was taking the cloverleaf ramp from I-40 east to I-235 north.  I thought that it was common knowledge that even if there is traffic on the main lanes to keep moving and MERGE.

[Tom958]

1. Erect a structurally independent pedestrian bridge across I-44 just south of the Gore Blvd bridge and build proper sidewalks accessing it.

2. Convert the interchange to a DDI by decking the space between the two existing Gore Blvd bridges. The existing parapets can remain as they are since the walkway of a DDI is down the center of the bridge.

3. Dismantle the pedestrian bridge and reinstall it halfway between Gore Blvd and Lee Blvd. 

[Bobby5280]

With the current attitudes of many citizens around Lawton-Fort Sill, combined with the budget issues of both the City of Lawton and State of Oklahoma, I'm not optimistic much will be done about this specific problem at I-44 & Gore Blvd. until perhaps more pedestrians are injured or killed. Too many people look at the issue entirely through the prism of getting around town only in a car.

On the other hand, the powers that be around here know Lawton is very seriously lacking in terms of walk-ability.

Thursday night my girlfriend and I attended a presentation by acclaimed city planner and urban designer Jeff Speck at the Cameron University theater. Lawton's Mayor, a few City Council members and many other prominent members of the community attended the presentation. The theater was packed. The great thing about Speck's presentation is that he didn't talk about walk-ability in general terms; he tailored it to Lawton. Speck made a lot of suggestions about what should be done, starting in the downtown area around Central Mall and moving outward. Speck also showed a lot of examples of downtown transition projects from other parts of the country. Speck worked on the large project now underway in downtown Oklahoma City.

Some of Lawton's streets have more lanes than they need and wider lanes than needed for the amount of traffic currently running on them. For more than a decade Lawton has struggled trying to get the beginnings of a bike path network established. The one that has been envisioned up to now has not been designed correctly. Merely striping a bike path lane into the shoulder of a street is a waste of time and money. Not many bicyclists will use such a path because they're not protected at all from motorists. Speck showed how parallel and diagonal parking slots can serve as a protection barrier between street traffic and bike paths. Speck recommended C Avenue in front of Central Mall and 6th Street in downtown be modified from 4 lanes to 2 lanes and have the extra space used for new landscaping, tree-lined medians and protected bike paths. Downtown Lawton can be transformed into a truly mixed use environment, combining residential and retail together.

Lawton needs to work on developing neighborhood zones and make each zone walk-able and accessible to bicycles. The zone around Gore Blvd and I-44 could be modified like this with the addition of some large sidewalks that could possibly double as shared use paths. Such paths are badly needed due to the growing number of hotels and restaurants in the immediate area. Proper width sidewalks on Gore Blvd. across I-44 could spur getting those paths built.

[aboges26]

They like to stop in the acceleration lane before merging into traffic when getting onto freeways.  Not sure whether they were a geezer or just an Okie, but it about scared the piss out of me the first time I drove across Oklahoma and was taking the cloverleaf ramp from I-40 east to I-235 north.  I thought that it was common knowledge that even if there is traffic on the main lanes to keep moving and MERGE.

THIS is what needs to be shown in every driving class today.  Thank you for sharing this Disney gem!

[Bobby5280]

They need to play that Disney video on the local TV station here, perhaps daily for a few years so all the glacier slow drivers around here can pick up on the hint.

We do have plenty of people around here who like to come to a dead stop at the end of an on ramp for I-44, just like they're making a right turn on a quiet little neighborhood street. You even have to watch it with the off ramps too. Be especially careful at the I-44 exit to Westbound Lee Blvd. You might find multiple cars at a dead stop trying to merge onto Lee. If they're headed to Leo & Ken's at the first traffic light you have to be careful. They'll block parts of the freaking intersection waiting for someone to clear out of a choice space in the front parking lot.

[Scott5114]

I haven't spent enough time in Lawton to know for sure, but it sounds like a pretty awful place!

[Bobby5280]

Lawton has both its good and bad qualities. The traffic around here is full of its own oddities. The large number of slow drivers in addition to the usual speeders is one of the things that seem unique to me. That, and the practice of many locals to never use a turn signal either for making lane changes or turns. But some will turn on a blinker and keep it flashing for a few miles. Others may throw on a blinker and then keep going straight, almost T-boning you if you tried to actually trust that blinker as truthful intention to make a turn.

On the bright side, Lawton isn't Houston. Even if I have to sit through a couple signal light cycles at least my drive from point A to point B in town is rarely any longer than 20 minutes.

[bugo]

I haven't spent enough time in Lawton to know for sure, but it sounds like a pretty awful place!

Oklahoma outside of Tulsa is a pretty awful place.

[rte66man]

I haven't spent enough time in Lawton to know for sure, but it sounds like a pretty awful place!

Oklahoma outside of Tulsa is a pretty awful place.

Your OKC envy is showing

[bugo]

I haven't spent enough time in Lawton to know for sure, but it sounds like a pretty awful place!

Oklahoma outside of Tulsa is a pretty awful place.

Your OKC envy is showing

I don't give a damn about Oklahoma City. It is not nearly as nice as Tulsa. I don't even think of it being in the same state. I wish the State of Sequoyah had been created out of Indian Territory so we wouldn't have to live in the same state as the parts of Oklahoma that have been embarrassing the state in the last month or so.

[Scott5114]

The bulk of OKC is pretty bland and sprawly, but there is a lot to see and do in the little loop formed by I-40, I-44, and I-235. There are a lot of neighborhoods in that area (places like the Paseo District and Deep Deuce) that if you didn't know better you would swear you were in another city.

Norman looks like a suburb on paper but it tends to be rather independent from OKC. I wouldn't be surprised if Norman begins trying to position itself as Oklahoma's version of Austin. (We banned the governor's daughter from our music festival, which was pretty hilarious.) I like living in Norman and would find it difficult to move elsewhere in the OKC metro.

A running theme with Oklahoma seems to be that there are lots of really neat out there to experience, but you kind of have to work at finding them, unlike a lot of places.