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[bugo]

This is an article from the awful Tulsa World. It talks about the 1921 race riot, but later on in the story it talks about removing part of the Inner Dispersal Loop (IDL) in downtown Tulsa. I-244 uses this stretch of highway, and US 412 is signed as a follow route. The eastern and southern legs of the IDL make up the secret I-444. This stretch of highway is very busy, and removing it would cause a traffic nightmare. The article claims that the noise from the expressway is as loud as a freight train is utter bullshit, and I know that from personal observations. The story tries to tie in the race riot and removal of I-244, which I find disingenuous. The activists are talking about reconnecting the Greenwood district with north Tulsa, which is also utter bullshit. Other than an AME church just north of I-244 and the OSU-Tulsa campus plus the Greenwood Cultural Center, there is literally nothing north of the highway. The Greenwood district is popularly known as Black Wall Street. Removing the highway wouldn't reconnect anything, because there is nothing to connect to. Urban renewal programs in the 1960s and 1970s removed almost every building in the Greenwood district all the way to Pine. There's nothing up there. Yes, the highway shouldn't have been built where it was, but that is where it was built and we have to deal with it. The underpass where Greenwood goes under I-244 is open and well lit, and the area feels safe, even with the freeway. It is a breeze to walk through. If I-244 were an at grade boulevard, crossing it right here would be an adventure, if not flat out unsafe. Out of all of the proposed freeway renewals, this one would do the least amount of good, because it wouldn't benefit anybody other than the anti-car cultists.

This satellite image is of the heart of the Greenwood district. You can see that removing the highway would do no good. The few buildings on Greenwood from I-244 to the railroad tracks were built after 1921, and the historical value of the area is gone. This area has become quite gentrified, and there is a minor league baseball stadium just to the west. The land has historical value, but the buildings and structures other than the Vernon AME Church are not historic. It is sad that the district is gone, but it is and can never be brought back. Never forget 1921, and never let it happen again.

[Scott5114]

I mean, good luck with that. OKC was wanting an urban arterial built in place of the old I-40 when it was torn down, but no matter how many meetings they had with ODOT, that is nowhere close to what they got. And that's with the city having to take over maintenance of whatever ODOT built. If the government of the state's capital city can't even get ODOT to do what it wants, a handful of activists in Tulsa stand no chance.

Anti-highway activists in Tulsa are nothing new, though. There was a big group called Tulsans Against Turnpikes that formed to stop the Creek Turnpike. They even went so far as to vandalize construction equipment. We can see how seriously they were taken.

[bwana39]

Yes, it is the standard reconnect something that is so disconnected than any type of connection was broken before the protesters were even born. While the people groups who may have genuinely been displaced decades ago are brought into the protests, even in the face of urbanism, it is the people who will develop the new property that are the ones that stand to gain. Remove the freeway and new development is available where none was previously possible. You sell the newness of it all and suddenly it is the place to be. Give that 15 to 20 years and again it passes to the next place.

Removing a freeway may spur localized development, but it rarely or never actually helps the people who lived there decades ago when the freeway was built and generally gentrification displaces the lower income people that the removal is "supposed" to help.

[Henry]

Let's face it, Tulsa is not Detroit or Baltimore, but there is plenty of history lost that freeway removal and rebuilding cannot get back. Where would the traffic go if there was no I-244? Yes, it probably should've never been built through Greenwood, but there are lots of residential areas north of the freeway that would've been just as vocal in opposition. As it is, this is a game that nobody wins because of the worsening traffic a boulevard conversion would bring, and the threat of gentrification, as stated above.

[Anthony_JK]

Yes, it is the standard reconnect something that is so disconnected than any type of connection was broken before the protesters were even born. While the people groups who may have genuinely been displaced decades ago are brought into the protests, even in the face of urbanism, it is the people who will develop the new property that are the ones that stand to gain. Remove the freeway and new development is available where none was previously possible. You sell the newness of it all and suddenly it is the place to be. Give that 15 to 20 years and again it passes to the next place.

Removing a freeway may spur localized development, but it rarely or never actually helps the people who lived there decades ago when the freeway was built and generally gentrification displaces the lower income people that the removal is "supposed" to help.

The key phrase here is "urban removal"....where redevelopment of a neighborhood is done by promising its residents new jobs, only to build to attract newer, wealthier people to that neighborhood, mostly by kicking out the current residents.

One of the very reasons why the I-10 Claiborne Elevated teardown in New Orleans was shelved (at least temporarily for now) was that very concern that the new development of Treme through the new boulevard would be used as a stick to remove current residents and rebuild that neighborhood as more upscale for wealthier imports. That's quite an irony considering the appeal of "restoration" of old Black neighborhoods cut down by freeways that the New Urbanists exploit in their anti-freeway zealotry.

[triplemultiplex]

Devil's Advocate: complete/improve the Gilcrease Expressway to remove thru traffic (including the under-construction portion) and then it becomes less unreasonable to shit-can Tulsa's downtown freeways.  Brand new can of worms to build a freeway thru the Osage Res, but it would provide all the thru connections currently used by those downtown freeways.  One would be left with five stubbed freeways feeding downtown likely still putting most commuters within a few blocks of their destination.

I don't think it would fully solve anyone's problems, though.  You can never undo the damage that was caused. My observation of freeway cancellation and removal in Milwaukee shows that the abandoned r/w either sits fallow for decades if the neighborhood is too economically depressed, or it gets snapped up by market-rate development and prices out those who currently live in the neighborhood.

The last 50 years with the Park Freeway illustrate this nicely.  It took over 30 years to begin to redevelop most of the land cleared for the Park Freeway west of I-43.  Land cleared for the same freeway east of the Milwaukee River got snapped up by developers very quickly and high-end rentals went up immediately, even in Milwaukee's early years of decline in the late 70's and early 80s. 

[skluth]

While I'm in favor of some freeway teardowns (e.g., I think the Park Freeway removal in Milwaukee was good. The Claiborne Freeway should be removed though the neighborhood will change because that's what cities do.), tearing down I-244 in Tulsa won't help the neighborhood much, won't undo the damage done decades ago, and will cause problems elsewhere.

It reminds me of the insane effort to remove I-70 (now I-44) in St Louis just north of downtown. I have a feeling the Tulsa effort is much like the St Louis effort which was the desires of white hipsters and urbanists with no input from the local African-American population. It would have negatively impacted the African-American community in St Louis as it was easily the best way to drive from the largely black North City and North County to downtown and to the job-rich industrial area just south of downtown. This was before the Musial Bridge so the highway's removal would also have disconnected the North Side from the also largely African-American East St Louis and adjacent communities.

[Plutonic Panda]

More of this stupid talk: https://www.route-fifty.com/infrastructure/2022/12/reconnecting-communities-billion-dollars-highway-removal-tulsa-new-orleans/380802/

Even worse is I-10 through New Orleans. That freeway is extremely important and needs to be rebuilt.

[skluth]

More of this stupid talk: https://www.route-fifty.com/infrastructure/2022/12/reconnecting-communities-billion-dollars-highway-removal-tulsa-new-orleans/380802/

Even worse is I-10 through New Orleans. That freeway is extremely important and needs to be rebuilt.

I-244 through Tulsa is part of a larger through routing from the Sand Springs Expressway to the Crosstown Expressway and acts much like US 75/I-345 in Dallas. The entire corridor should have been built a bit further north originally but now that the entire system is built its removal would be a huge and costly mistake.

OTOH, I-10 through New Orleans is redundant, destroyed and continues to negatively affect a neighborhood, and won't be rebuilt because the cost to rebuild it is less than its removal. It's a cost v benefits and the few benefits are vastly outweighed by the cost, both economically and the city environment. Only the few who whine that it adds a few minutes to their commute think it's important. Everything between Elysian Fields and the Superdome could be removed. It won't fix Iberville and Treme but it will make it better for the locals (though they'll whine about the inevitable gentrification).  But that discussion belongs in Mid-South, not here.

[Plutonic Panda]

Every single time I’ve been on that stretch of I-10 it has been absolutely packed and I use it all the time when I’m there. I’m on it roughly a dozen or so times a year. It is definitely needed and hopefully is rebuilt. Not sure it matters whether or not it is cheaper to tear it down vs rebuild it. It’d be cheaper to just tear out all infrastructure and neglect it. Yet we don’t do that. Hopefully LaDOT has the sense to rebuild it.

[LilianaUwU]

As a white woman, it's none of my business talking about race here, so I'll address the other elephant in the room: the AADT on I-244 (as high as 84k!) is way too high for any serious talks of tearing it down.

[Bobby5280]

IMHO, if I-244 is torn down in the Downtown Tulsa area it will speed up the process of businesses and residents migrating to other parts of the Tulsa metro.

I go to (and thru) Tulsa from time to time. Yet it is a rarity that I ever have to go to the Downtown area. Normally I'm visiting spots near or South of the I-44 corridor. I have an Aunt who lives in Owasso, but I stay on I-44 and take the Mingo Valley Expressway (US-169) to get there. If some New Urbanist types want to make visiting Downtown Tulsa even more of a pain in the ass I just won't go there. Driving on surface streets in other parts of Tulsa (such as Memorial Road) is bad enough.

If it was my call, the only thing I would be open to doing is removing the North span of the IDL in return for beefing up the South and East sides of the IDL. Or they could get rid of the South side of the IDL in return for improving the West, North and East segments. It is critical for super highway connectivity to be maintained for I-244 and US-412 somehow. They can't just make those freeways turn into dead ends without serious consequences.

[debaterthatchases]

IMO There's no way this is going to happen, especially since US-412 is going to get a new Interstate designation. Too many people use the north section of the IDL, and people would riot if any serious plans for its removal were made.

[Anthony_JK]

More of this stupid talk: https://www.route-fifty.com/infrastructure/2022/12/reconnecting-communities-billion-dollars-highway-removal-tulsa-new-orleans/380802/

Even worse is I-10 through New Orleans. That freeway is extremely important and needs to be rebuilt.

I-244 through Tulsa is part of a larger through routing from the Sand Springs Expressway to the Crosstown Expressway and acts much like US 75/I-345 in Dallas. The entire corridor should have been built a bit further north originally but now that the entire system is built its removal would be a huge and costly mistake.

OTOH, I-10 through New Orleans is redundant, destroyed and continues to negatively affect a neighborhood, and won't be rebuilt because the cost to rebuild it is less than its removal. It's a cost v benefits and the few benefits are vastly outweighed by the cost, both economically and the city environment. Only the few who whine that it adds a few minutes to their commute think it's important. Everything between Elysian Fields and the Superdome could be removed. It won't fix Iberville and Treme but it will make it better for the locals (though they'll whine about the inevitable gentrification).  But that discussion belongs in Mid-South, not here.

"Redundant", MY ASS.

The Claiborne Elevated is the ONLY direct freeway connection between downtown New Orleans, the French Quarter, the Superdome, and the Medical Center district, and New Orleans East. It also serves as the primary connection from New Orleans East to the Westbank Expressway via the Crescent City Connection.

To remove it and divert traffic up the Ponchatrain Expressway to I-610 would not only NOT service the major traffic that serves that area from NOLA East, but it would add additional problems to the surface level Claiborne Avenue, especially if proponents of the freeway teardown propose to keep it at a 4-lane boulevard.

In addition, there are many residents of Treme who oppose any teardown because of fears that any redevelopment will be exploited by business and real estate developers to remove current residences of that community in the name of "urban renewal".

No, DO NOT TEAR DOWN the Claiborne Elevated. Instead, do as what is being done with the I-49 Lafayette Connector and incorporate CSS and neighborhood integration into any rebuild. THAT makes more sense than putting 144K VPD of traffic onto to a 4-lane boulevard and already pressed city streets.

(If you want to move this to Mid-South, mods, that would be fine with me.)

And, I oppose tearing down I-244 in Tulsa for the same reason. Major critical freeway arterials should not be removed just for the feelz of New Urbanists and the myopic desire to restore the past.

[triplemultiplex]

I'll play devil's advocate.
The new interstate can use the Gilcrease to bypass the section of I-244 in question.  Whip up a better interchange on the west end there and that problem goes away.

The thing about downtown freeways like Tulsa is the vast majority of the traffic has an origin/destination downtown somewhere.  Very little of the traffic is thru traffic, especially in a place like Tulsa where the major interstate completely bypasses the urban core.  Yes there's a lot of traffic on these freeways, but that's because most of it is getting on/off somewhere around there.  The comparatively little thru traffic gets a minor inconvenience by taking some sort of belt routing.  The rest of the traffic melts into the street grid to take more direct routes to where those drivers are going.  So you have to drive seven blocks through downtown instead of whipping around to the other side of an inner freeway loop and getting there two minutes earlier, big whoop.  I'd hardly call that an onerous burden.

We've learned over the last few decades that it is extremely difficult to fix the mistakes of past generations in our cities.  And we've also learned that once an urban neighborhood is significantly altered by some kind of large urban renewal project, you will never get the old neighborhood back.  The circumstances that led to that neighborhood cannot be recreated. Building practices change.  People's needs and wants change.  New technology makes certain features anachronistic.  And more and more, every Tom, Dick and Harry feels the need to have their specific, whiny voice heard.  "What about parking? That building is ugly!  I associate that type of thing with crime in a way that definitely doesn't make my biases obvious!"  Simple things like it's way too expensive to build things out of masonry these days, so you'll never recreate all the 'quaint' brick architecture that was so prevalent a hundred years ago.

So it's true to say you're not going to recreate Rosewood simply by removing a chunk of I-244.  But does that mean we have to be completely invested in the status quo?  I'm seeing a bit of reverse-NIMBYism here.  "You can't tear down my freeway and put up a neighborhood!"  It's the same energy.

[swake]

I'll play devil's advocate.
The new interstate can use the Gilcrease to bypass the section of I-244 in question.  Whip up a better interchange on the west end there and that problem goes away.

The thing about downtown freeways like Tulsa is the vast majority of the traffic has an origin/destination downtown somewhere.  Very little of the traffic is thru traffic, especially in a place like Tulsa where the major interstate completely bypasses the urban core.  Yes there's a lot of traffic on these freeways, but that's because most of it is getting on/off somewhere around there.  The comparatively little thru traffic gets a minor inconvenience by taking some sort of belt routing.  The rest of the traffic melts into the street grid to take more direct routes to where those drivers are going.  So you have to drive seven blocks through downtown instead of whipping around to the other side of an inner freeway loop and getting there two minutes earlier, big whoop.  I'd hardly call that an onerous burden.

We've learned over the last few decades that it is extremely difficult to fix the mistakes of past generations in our cities.  And we've also learned that once an urban neighborhood is significantly altered by some kind of large urban renewal project, you will never get the old neighborhood back.  The circumstances that led to that neighborhood cannot be recreated. Building practices change.  People's needs and wants change.  New technology makes certain features anachronistic.  And more and more, every Tom, Dick and Harry feels the need to have their specific, whiny voice heard.  "What about parking? That building is ugly!  I associate that type of thing with crime in a way that definitely doesn't make my biases obvious!"  Simple things like it's way too expensive to build things out of masonry these days, so you'll never recreate all the 'quaint' brick architecture that was so prevalent a hundred years ago.

So it's true to say you're not going to recreate Rosewood simply by removing a chunk of I-244.  But does that mean we have to be completely invested in the status quo?  I'm seeing a bit of reverse-NIMBYism here.  "You can't tear down my freeway and put up a neighborhood!"  It's the same energy.

They really are only talking about taking out the north downtown section of I-244 from the Tisdale to US-75, just 10 blocks or a little less than a mile. Greenwood was only in this section. The section of I-244 just east of downtown was a poor white area, in fact that neighborhood was setting for The Outsiders.

The biggest problem with removing the highway even in downtown is the section that is actually historic Greenwood has two historic churches, the Greenwood Cultural Center and OSU-Tulsa directly abutting the highway to the north of the highway. And the south side of the highway has the remaining historic Greenwood buildings, Tulsa's baseball stadium and the park that is a memorial to the race massacre right up to I-244. Removing the highway would just create a 200-300 foot strip of un-developable land between all this. 

Beyond that, the section of Historic Greenwood to the south of the highway, the part that is in downtown, is gone. This area was the commercial "Black Wall Street" heart of Greenwood, but today it is completely redeveloped and gentrified. There's no land left for the community to rebuild. The pictures on google maps are very badly out of date.

The western section of the highway where if I-244 were removed that could be redeveloped is NOT part of Greenwood, it was actually a wealthy white neighborhood called Brady Heights, named for an early Tulsa city father and KKK member. Removing the highway here would only connect maybe five blocks of developable land.

So if I-244 was removed you would spend $500 million plus to reconstruct two 3 stack interchanges and remove a busy highway that would create a very small amount of developable land in the wrong location.

Better to keep the highway as a memorial to the wrongs that were committed.

[Bobby5280]

The thing about downtown freeways like Tulsa is the vast majority of the traffic has an origin/destination downtown somewhere.

US-412 is a thru route on the Northern leg of the IDL. That's on top of I-244 running as a thru route on the West and North legs of the IDL. US-75 is technically a thru route on the South and East parts of the IDL. The Broken Arrow Expressway also functions as a regional thru route. Someone driving from Muskogee to Stillwater would likely use the BAE to pick up US-412 at the downtown IDL.

[triplemultiplex]

A completed Gilcrease Tpk provides most of the through connections that currently go through central Tulsa.  Build that last 'missing' piece between the Tisdale and US 412/future I-whatever, then the IDL is redundant as far as thru traffic is concerned.

Thru traffic is negligible compared to vehicles with an origin/destination in the central business district, so thru traffic can easily be served by suburban freeways/turnpikes.  There is no reason those vehicles should have to go thru downtown.  The Muskogee - Stillwater example, that vehicle can use I-44 and the Gilcrease to get to where they are going.

I think a map is coming.

[silverback1065]

does there need to be a full box around downtown? maybe 1 of 4 legs could disappear with little to no effect? 

[rte66man]

A completed Gilcrease Tpk provides most of the through connections that currently go through central Tulsa.  Build that last 'missing' piece between the Tisdale and US 412/future I-whatever, then the IDL is redundant as far as thru traffic is concerned.

Thru traffic is negligible compared to vehicles with an origin/destination in the central business district, so thru traffic can easily be served by suburban freeways/turnpikes.  There is no reason those vehicles should have to go thru downtown.  The Muskogee - Stillwater example, that vehicle can use I-44 and the Gilcrease to get to where they are going.

I think a map is coming.

Have you ever been through or to Tulsa? As mentioned upthread, you are diverting upwards of 85,000 vehicles onto other routes. No one, and I repeat, NO ONE will take a Gilcrease route around the north side. Putting that much traffic on the other 3 legs would require a massive rebuild of 3 stack interchanges as well as widening the existing roadway (which is problematic as there isn't any easily available ROW).

I lived and worked near downtown for 11 years and removing the north leg of the IDL would have been a pain for my travel patterns, especially as many of those trips were to OSU-Tulsa. I wouldn't recommend burying it due to the obscene cost of doing so. Swake is right. Leave it as a memorial to the wrongs that were committed.

[Bobby5280]

A completed Gilcrease Tpk provides most of the through connections that currently go through central Tulsa.

Through? No. That suggestion would take traffic well over and around the downtown area, well out of the way. It is NOT a "direct" connection. It would add a decent number of miles to the route, not to mention a bit more in toll fees.

Like it or not, that square-shaped IDL is a highway connection hub going around downtown Tulsa. Removing one or more legs of it would unleash a series of consequences (some of which I've already mentioned).

[kphoger]

A completed Gilcrease Tpk provides most of the through connections that currently go through central Tulsa.

Through? No. That suggestion would take traffic well over and around the downtown area, well out of the way.

Yeah.  "Through" as in "through-traffic", i.e. traffic with a destination other than Tulsa.  Going over and around the downtown of a city is, in my opinion, preferable for through-traffic.

[bugo]

The thing about downtown freeways like Tulsa is the vast majority of the traffic has an origin/destination downtown somewhere.  Very little of the traffic is thru traffic, especially in a place like Tulsa where the major interstate completely bypasses the urban core.  Yes there's a lot of traffic on these freeways, but that's because most of it is getting on/off somewhere around there.  The comparatively little thru traffic gets a minor inconvenience by taking some sort of belt routing.  The rest of the traffic melts into the street grid to take more direct routes to where those drivers are going.  So you have to drive seven blocks through downtown instead of whipping around to the other side of an inner freeway loop and getting there two minutes earlier, big whoop.  I'd hardly call that an onerous burden.

Can you provide concrete evidence that most traffic going through downtown Tulsa gets off the freeway and isn't through traffic?

[In_Correct]

A completed Gilcrease Tpk provides most of the through connections that currently go through central Tulsa.

Through? No. That suggestion would take traffic well over and around the downtown area, well out of the way.

Yeah.  "Through" as in "through-traffic", i.e. traffic with a destination other than Tulsa.  Going over and around the downtown of a city is, in my opinion, preferable for through-traffic.

I Am " Through Traffic " ... I was on Interstate 44 which seemed to take me through A Very Beautiful Downtown that does not seem disturbed by a Superhighway being near it. It also did not disturb me to take this Unstylish Route. Since I was in a hurry, I most certainly would not prefer a needlessly longer distance.

[Scott5114]

I Am " Through Traffic " ... I was on Interstate 44 which seemed to take me through A Very Beautiful Downtown that does not seem disturbed by a Superhighway being near it. It also did not disturb me to take this Unstylish Route. Since I was in a hurry, I most certainly would not prefer a needlessly longer distance.

Interstate 44 doesn't go through downtown, so I'm not sure what you were seeing.