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:
(https://i.imgur.com/jCYCCLY.jpg)
Parallel to I-35 five miles east of downtown:
(https://i.imgur.com/XXi4CRT.jpg)
Started south of Norman, I don't know where, but it must've been pretty far:
(https://i.imgur.com/OGGOJNM.jpg)
And, might as well get the southwest quadrant of the outer loop:
(https://i.imgur.com/5p5zus8.jpg)
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:
(https://farm2.staticflickr.com/1867/43364423085_9eba5620ec_z.jpg)
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 (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.
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.
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.
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.
Quote from: edwaleni on August 26, 2018, 11:30:27 PM
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
Quote from: The Ghostbuster on August 27, 2018, 05:00:10 PM
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.
Quote from: Brian556 on August 27, 2018, 07:45:57 PM
Quote from: edwaleni on August 26, 2018, 11:30:27 PM
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.
Quote from: Tom958 on August 28, 2018, 05:58:02 AM
Quote from: The Ghostbuster on August 27, 2018, 05:00:10 PM
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?
I had forgotten I-440 was once a thing in OKC.
Quote from: US 89 on August 28, 2018, 11:24:38 AM
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.
Speaking of Sooner Road, what's the story behind the bypassed older alignment from 119th Street to 134th?
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.
Quote from: TheStranger on August 28, 2018, 02:01:36 PM
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)
Quote from: Tom958 on August 28, 2018, 05:58:02 AMWell, 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 (https://docs.wixstatic.com/ugd/7181a5_264ee00fd4b640c48bb0d482cd2ec5c7.pdf) currently being built follows a parallel corridor about 13 miles to the east.
Quote from: J N Winkler on August 28, 2018, 05:55:14 PMAs for the east leg of the Sooner Freeway, the Eastern Oklahoma County Turnpike (https://docs.wixstatic.com/ugd/7181a5_264ee00fd4b640c48bb0d482cd2ec5c7.pdf) 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.
Quote from: J N Winkler on August 28, 2018, 05:55:14 PM
As for the east leg of the Sooner Freeway, the Eastern Oklahoma County Turnpike (https://docs.wixstatic.com/ugd/7181a5_264ee00fd4b640c48bb0d482cd2ec5c7.pdf) currently being built follows a parallel corridor about 13 miles to the east.
Per OKDOT
QuoteState 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.
Quote from: J N Winkler on August 28, 2018, 05:55:14 PM
Quote from: Tom958 on August 28, 2018, 05:58:02 AMWell, 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.
Quote from: edwaleni on August 26, 2018, 12:45:12 AM
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:
(https://farm2.staticflickr.com/1867/43364423085_9eba5620ec_z.jpg)
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 (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.
Surely the section line that is Sooner Road was a road before OK 77H was designed.
Quote from: edwaleni on August 26, 2018, 12:45:12 AM
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...
Where exactly are the stretches of aborted highway that were cleared in preparation of the Sooner Freeway?
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
Quote from: bugo on September 08, 2018, 10:00:09 AM
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.
Quote from: Scott5114 on September 08, 2018, 04:55:24 AM
Quote from: edwaleni on August 26, 2018, 12:45:12 AM
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.
Quote from: The Ghostbuster on August 27, 2018, 05:00:10 PM
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
Quote from: Scott5114 on August 28, 2018, 04:49:19 PM
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.
Quote from: edwaleni on August 28, 2018, 05:01:53 PM
Quote from: TheStranger on August 28, 2018, 02:01:36 PM
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!
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.
Quote from: Plutonic Panda on May 30, 2023, 05:00:42 AM
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.).
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.