Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[edwaleni]

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...

I found references in the original Sooner Freeway EIS on 77H.  Google Search pulls up some history on it.

[bugo]

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.

Most of the proposed Tulsa-area expressways were built except for the Osage Expressway north of 36th Street North (LL Tisdale Parkway extension), the western part of the Gilcrease Expressway and the infamous Riverside Freeway. The Tulsa-Skiatook expressway will likely never get built due to a lack of need. The missing segment of the Gilcrease Expressway is proposed to be built as a toll road. The Riverside Freeway is dead and buried. It was the only cancelled freeway in Tulsa and was cancelled due to neighborhood opposition. If it had been built, it would have begun at I-44 (at a non freeway-to-freeway interchange) and roughly followed Riverside Drive north to about 31st Street. From there it would have followed the abandoned Midland Valley Railroad corridor north, ending at the southeastern corner of the IDL (Inner Dispersal Loop) where it meets the BA (Broken Arrow Expressway) at an interchange between I-444, US 64, US 75 and OK 51. This would have gone smack dab through the future site of the Gathering Place, the new $450 million park that recently opened. There would have been an interchange with Riverside Drive smack dab in the middle of the park site. There is zero chance of it ever being built. It would not only have prevented the Gathering Place from being built it would have also have run through the long park between Riverside and the Arkansas River. I am extremely pro-freeway, but this is a rare example of a road that I'm glad never got built.

Nexus 5X

[yakra]

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.

The new alignment looks to be on a gentler grade too.

[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)

After all these years I finally found out why OK-77H has that strange westward bend from 119th down to 134th Street.

OKC Water has future plans to build a twin of Lake Stanley Draper by damming up West Elm Creek. The back end of that lake is planned to come up the valley there, so in prep 77H was moved west. South Sooner Place is closed on both ends of the valley which closely outlines where the lake water will be. How did I find out? From a OKC meteorologist!

[Plutonic Panda]

This would’ve been a cool alignment for a tollway similar to the north Dallas tollway through Highland Park, where it gets really dense. Could be somewhat useful for relieving the traffic on I 35 from Norman to I 40 right of way constraints would be a bitch.

[rte66man]

This would’ve been a cool alignment for a tollway similar to the north Dallas tollway through Highland Park, where it gets really dense. Could be somewhat useful for relieving the traffic on I 35 from Norman to I 40 right of way constraints would be a bitch.

At one point, there was an effort to do just that. IIRC, it was in the late 90's when the Legislature passed a slew of authorizations for roads that stood virtually no change of being built (Duncan - Davis, Okarche - Watonga, etc.).

[Bobby5280]

Some of those proposed toll roads, such as the Duncan-Davis or Clinton-Snyder plans, were just stupid.

Now, I do think there should be a highway built direct via a diagonal path from Okarche to Watonga, which would bypass the L-shape path going through Kingfisher. Given the current state of the OK-3 corridor such a road could start out as a 2-lane highway. The OK-3 corridor from Woodward down thru OKC and on to the SE corner of OK could turn into a more significant route. I've seen old turnpike proposal maps where OKC to Woodward was one idea. The I-49 and I-369 corridors could turn Texarkana into a highway hub. A diagonal highway going NW to SE thru Oklahoma could tie into that, giving OKC and points farther Northwest a faster highway link to the Louisiana Gulf Coast.