The Sooner Freeway

[Tom958]

It came up in conversation a while back and I uploaded some photos from my 1975 Oklahoma state map. So, how close did this come to getting built? Does anyone ever mention it today?

Here's the northern terminus, with a line diagram of the interchange:


Parallel to I-35 five miles east of downtown:


Started south of Norman, I don't know where, but it must've been pretty far:


And, might as well get the southwest quadrant of the outer loop:

[edwaleni]

Looking at your map as compared today.

The north side got built as the John Kilpatrick Turnpike. But that ends at SW 15th just south of I-40. Noted as one of the most unfriendly highways ever built (in 1992) it has no exit numbers.

The Kilpatrick Extension shows this:

On October 29, 2015, Governor Mary Fallin announced that the Kilpatrick Turnpike would be extended south to end at SH-152 near Will Rogers World Airport as part of Driving Forward, a $892 million turnpike package. The project is scheduled to begin in the third quarter of 2016

That work will look like this:



This plan only takes it to connect with OK-152 at Council, which that connector was never defined in your old map.   Just OK-152 from Council Road to I-35 outside Will Rogers Airport.

The rest of that planned SW bypass down to Norman is nowhere on the books.

As for the Sooner Freeway, which was to parallel I-35 all the way south to Purcell, Oklahoma died with the oil shocks in 1973.  An EIS was created in 1972 to get it built north from Purcell north to Tucumseh Road in Norman. They expected a 31,000 ADT by 1995 in the report.  Today most that ROW north of Norman became OK-77H, a 4 lane arterial and then became Sooner Road.

The Sooner Freeway was designed from the start to get commuters from the Norman area to Tinker AFB without having to involve I-35.  Eventually they planned to extend it on up to the I-44/I35 intersection to provide the same type of access from the north.

Today, 77H and Sooner Road are the primary commuting routes to get to Tinker AFB.  OK-77H got its name in 1950 when a planned community of Hollywood was being laid out near Norman.  The town never came to be, but the road name stuck.

The Sooner Freeway EIS can be found here:

https://books.google.com/books?id=Wpc2AQAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false

You can still see where OKDOT acquired ROW, especially south and around Tinker, and many of the setbacks on Sooner Road are still there, but no efforts have been made to maintain a centerline near and around Norman.

Hope that helps.

[Bobby5280]

The Kilpatrick Extension to Airport Road is a crooked, curvy joke. 20 years ago ODOT could have easily secured the ROW needed to transform the Kilpatrick into a larger outer loop highway for OKC. Not much was built along S Sara Road in Mustang back then. Now it's all swallowed up by development. The outer loop is still badly needed. Unfortunately it's going to cost Oklahomans a fortune when ODOT is forced to build the extension down to I-44 and over to Norman.

[Tom958]

Hope that helps.

Thanks! 

[edwaleni]

My freakiest moment on the Kilpatrick was in 2000 when the I was going north just past Lake Overholser.

It was about 23 degrees F outside and there was a cloudburst of rain!  Not snow, not sleet, but rain!

The warmer rain hitting the colder outside of everyone's windshields caused them to completely fog up instantly and everyone started hitting the brakes.

I bailed for the shoulder until I could get my heater cranked up on full defrost, high heat. It still took a minute for that fog to clear and more for others as the road nearly came to a halt.

I kept looking at my outside temp gauge thinking it was broken (it wasn't).  I kept checking the road as I was worried it would freeze on the colder pavement. (It didn't)

It only lasted maybe 45 seconds to a minute, then stopped.

It was such a freaky weather event, I emailed several meteorologists on it to see if it was abnormal. (rain fall well below freezing). No one replied, so I just accepted it. But I have never again seen rain fall so far below freezing.

[The Ghostbuster]

I have an Oklahoma state highway map from about the same time. I have wondered about those freeways that were proposed in Oklahoma City and Tulsa back then that never got built. This Sooner Freeway looks like it would have been a good alternative to Interstate 35 had it been built.

[Brian556]

My freakiest moment on the Kilpatrick was in 2000 when the I was going north just past Lake Overholser.

It was about 23 degrees F outside and there was a cloudburst of rain!  Not snow, not sleet, but rain!

The warmer rain hitting the colder outside of everyone's windshields caused them to completely fog up instantly and everyone started hitting the brakes.

I bailed for the shoulder until I could get my heater cranked up on full defrost, high heat. It still took a minute for that fog to clear and more for others as the road nearly came to a halt.

I kept looking at my outside temp gauge thinking it was broken (it wasn't).  I kept checking the road as I was worried it would freeze on the colder pavement. (It didn't)

It only lasted maybe 45 seconds to a minute, then stopped.

It was such a freaky weather event, I emailed several meteorologists on it to see if it was abnormal. (rain fall well below freezing). No one replied, so I just accepted it. But I have never again seen rain fall so far below freezing.

That really is not uncommon. I remember hours and hours of freezing rain with temps in the low 20's before

[Tom958]

I have an Oklahoma state highway map from about the same time. I have wondered about those freeways that were proposed in Oklahoma City and Tulsa back then that never got built. This Sooner Freeway looks like it would have been a good alternative to Interstate 35 had it been built.

Well, so is I-235, which, amazingly, isn't on this map. It's not as though OKC was that abjectly deprived.

[edwaleni]

My freakiest moment on the Kilpatrick was in 2000 when the I was going north just past Lake Overholser.

It was about 23 degrees F outside and there was a cloudburst of rain!  Not snow, not sleet, but rain!

The warmer rain hitting the colder outside of everyone's windshields caused them to completely fog up instantly and everyone started hitting the brakes.

I bailed for the shoulder until I could get my heater cranked up on full defrost, high heat. It still took a minute for that fog to clear and more for others as the road nearly came to a halt.

I kept looking at my outside temp gauge thinking it was broken (it wasn't).  I kept checking the road as I was worried it would freeze on the colder pavement. (It didn't)

It only lasted maybe 45 seconds to a minute, then stopped.

It was such a freaky weather event, I emailed several meteorologists on it to see if it was abnormal. (rain fall well below freezing). No one replied, so I just accepted it. But I have never again seen rain fall so far below freezing.

That really is not uncommon. I remember hours and hours of freezing rain with temps in the low 20's before

I have been in freezing rain before, usually with temps in the high 20's-low 30's.  I have also been where the ground is colder than the rain and it freezes there. I have seen and heard lightning and thunder in snow storms.

I just haven't seen a downpour when the ambient air temp was that low. And the wind was blowing hard too, so there was a wind chill in effect. The fact it made everyone's windows fog immediately shows you an idea on the temp variance.

[US 89]

I have an Oklahoma state highway map from about the same time. I have wondered about those freeways that were proposed in Oklahoma City and Tulsa back then that never got built. This Sooner Freeway looks like it would have been a good alternative to Interstate 35 had it been built.

Well, so is I-235, which, amazingly, isn't on this map. It's not as though OKC was that abjectly deprived.

I don't know much about traffic levels on I-35 between OKC and Norman, but if it's anything like I-15 south of Salt Lake City, a second north-south freeway would be extremely helpful. If there was a parallel freeway between Salt Lake and Provo, it would do wonders for I-15 as well as the surface streets.

Also interesting that that map had 77H on Sunnylane Rd, not Sooner. I assume that switch happened when the Sooner Freeway got cancelled?

[triplemultiplex]

I had forgotten I-440 was once a thing in OKC.

[Scott5114]

Also interesting that that map had 77H on Sunnylane Rd, not Sooner. I assume that switch happened when the Sooner Freeway got cancelled?

No, that didn't happen until December 12, 1988.

[TheStranger]

Speaking of Sooner Road, what's the story behind the bypassed older alignment from 119th Street to 134th?

[Scott5114]

The old alignment has a bridge out on GSV data–guessing that bridge was bypassed. Whatever it was, it happened before December 1988, because there's nothing regarding a realignment after that.

[edwaleni]

Speaking of Sooner Road, what's the story behind the bypassed older alignment from 119th Street to 134th?

Yes, I noticed that too. At first I thought that was where it was supposed to intersect with a new route from Moore, then I thought it was where the new Sooner Freeway was supposed to break off for Norman.

It appears to be something more mundane.

OKC Water has 2 large sewage settling ponds on Sooner Place (the former South Sooner Road)

[J N Winkler]

Well, so is I-235, which, amazingly, isn't on this map. It's not as though OKC was that abjectly deprived.

The southern part of I-235 is on the map as "Capitol Freeway."  It was subsequently built to the northwest (early 1980's, I think) to tie in with the already-built US 77 Broadway Extension.

As for the east leg of the Sooner Freeway, the Eastern Oklahoma County Turnpike currently being built follows a parallel corridor about 13 miles to the east.

[Tom958]

As for the east leg of the Sooner Freeway, the Eastern Oklahoma County Turnpike currently being built follows a parallel corridor about 13 miles to the east.

I dunno... the connection between that and the Sooner Freeway seems extremely tenuous.

[edwaleni]

As for the east leg of the Sooner Freeway, the Eastern Oklahoma County Turnpike currently being built follows a parallel corridor about 13 miles to the east.

Per OKDOT

State Transportation Secretary Gary Ridley said last month that the Northeast Oklahoma County Loop is desperately needed to ease the traffic load of I-35.

Ridley said the Oklahoma City metro area has a shortage of north-south thoroughfares, a problem the proposed toll road near Choctaw could help to solve.

"You have good east-west movement of traffic that allows you to have good mobility,"  he said of the Oklahoma City area's traffic infrastructure. "The problem is north-south. ... Twenty, twenty-five years from now (it's going to get a lot worse)."

Which is exactly why the Sooner Freeway was proposed in years past. As a I-35 reliever enhanced with Tinker AFB access.  The highway planners had it right in 1972, they just didn't have the money.

Now they are building under the same premise, but using the Tollroad to fund it.

It was now or never to be honest. OKC is sprawling to the east now and vacant land is drying up. But if they want to really replace the Sooner, they will have to take it further south down Hog Creek Valley and turn it west before Lake Thunderbird to reach Norman and I-35. I would say look for a new extension announcement in a couple of years.

[rte66man]

Well, so is I-235, which, amazingly, isn't on this map. It's not as though OKC was that abjectly deprived.

The southern part of I-235 is on the map as "Capitol Freeway."  It was subsequently built to the northwest (early 1980's, I think) to tie in with the already-built US 77 Broadway Extension.

The extension north from I-40 to NE 23rd (including that long overpass) wasn't opened until 1990.  I lived at 122nd and Penn and commuted to Norman every day.  I had to go west to Portland, then south until it became the Hefner Parkway just north of 63rd. 

[MantyMadTown]

Looking at your map as compared today.

The north side got built as the John Kilpatrick Turnpike. But that ends at SW 15th just south of I-40. Noted as one of the most unfriendly highways ever built (in 1992) it has no exit numbers.

The Kilpatrick Extension shows this:

On October 29, 2015, Governor Mary Fallin announced that the Kilpatrick Turnpike would be extended south to end at SH-152 near Will Rogers World Airport as part of Driving Forward, a $892 million turnpike package. The project is scheduled to begin in the third quarter of 2016

That work will look like this:



This plan only takes it to connect with OK-152 at Council, which that connector was never defined in your old map.   Just OK-152 from Council Road to I-35 outside Will Rogers Airport.

The rest of that planned SW bypass down to Norman is nowhere on the books.

As for the Sooner Freeway, which was to parallel I-35 all the way south to Purcell, Oklahoma died with the oil shocks in 1973.  An EIS was created in 1972 to get it built north from Purcell north to Tucumseh Road in Norman. They expected a 31,000 ADT by 1995 in the report.  Today most that ROW north of Norman became OK-77H, a 4 lane arterial and then became Sooner Road.

The Sooner Freeway was designed from the start to get commuters from the Norman area to Tinker AFB without having to involve I-35.  Eventually they planned to extend it on up to the I-44/I35 intersection to provide the same type of access from the north.

Today, 77H and Sooner Road are the primary commuting routes to get to Tinker AFB.  OK-77H got its name in 1950 when a planned community of Hollywood was being laid out near Norman.  The town never came to be, but the road name stuck.

The Sooner Freeway EIS can be found here:

https://books.google.com/books?id=Wpc2AQAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false

You can still see where OKDOT acquired ROW, especially south and around Tinker, and many of the setbacks on Sooner Road are still there, but no efforts have been made to maintain a centerline near and around Norman.

Hope that helps.

When will it be completed? Is there a date set? I'm wondering if it will open before the end of the year.

[bugo]

Surely the section line that is Sooner Road was a road before OK 77H was designed.

[Scott5114]

Today, 77H and Sooner Road are the primary commuting routes to get to Tinker AFB.  OK-77H got its name in 1950 when a planned community of Hollywood was being laid out near Norman.  The town never came to be, but the road name stuck.

Out of curiosity, do you have a book or anything that states that for sure? The H in 77H standing for Hollywood seems like a pretty obvious connection, but I've never seen it written down anywhere–it could always have been ODOT forgetting the alphabet...

[bugo]

Where exactly are the stretches of aborted highway that were cleared in preparation of the Sooner Freeway?

[will_e_777]

even an outer loop where the Kilpatrick is now, and a south loop directly thru Moore?

http://www.okladot.state.ok.us/maps/state/pdfs/map_state_1976-back.pdf

[edwaleni]

Where exactly are the stretches of aborted highway that were cleared in preparation of the Sooner Freeway?

Technically, none.  It never got past its EIS due to funding problems.

But setbacks and some property for the ROW had been acquired around Tinker AFB, much of it sold off many moons ago.