ACCESS Oklahoma

[hotdogPi]

I thought I read on here that the term freeway just means that it's a road that is completely free flowing with no direct conflict points. I'm not sure if merging would be considered a direct conflict point or not. But it was something like that.

It has nothing to do with merging. It has to do with it not being free because it's tolled.

[kphoger]

I thought I read on here that the term freeway just means that it's a road that is completely free flowing with no direct conflict points.

A freeway is free of cross-traffic.  Obviously merging doesn't disqualify it, or else no highway with interchanges would be a freeway.

[Bobby5280]

I may make a lot of people on here hate me after saying this, but selfishly I want the housing market to collapse, cause I want to buy a row home in San Francisco so bad.

Unfortunately, San Francisco is one of very few places in the Western US where real estate values have actually increased year over year. That's thanks in part to the AI spending boom and some of the companies associated with it being headquartered there. If the AI bubble pops and causes a lot of tech industry workers to lose their jobs then it could affect the San Francisco housing market. BTW, housing in other parts of the Bay Area, such as San Jose, is in a downturn, like much of the rest of California.

Long term: things home owners have been used to, such as extracting wealth out of one's home (borrowing against equity, reverse mortgages, etc.) could come to an end or at least get a lot more difficult. Retired age people wanting to down-size into smaller, more affordable homes may end up trapped in their McMansions they bought 10-20 years ago. That's due to the steepening downslope of America's demographics. Falling birth rates and shrinking immigration levels will greatly reduce the amount of future home buyers. Japan has a glut of abandoned homes no one wants that are falling into ruin; the homes are nicknamed "Akiya." Tax costs and renovation costs are tough barriers to overcome. Most of those homes stay empty. In America we already have a decent amount of Akiya houses in small towns and rural areas. As our demographics picture worsens the problem will become more widespread.

[Plutonic Panda]

I thought I read on here that the term freeway just means that it's a road that is completely free flowing with no direct conflict points. I'm not sure if merging would be considered a direct conflict point or not. But it was something like that.

It has nothing to do with merging. It has to do with it not being free because it's tolled.

Yeah, I've heard this before but I've heard this on this form and I've heard this from engineers tollway actually our freeways. As ridiculous as it sounds, it doesn't have anything to do with whether or not the facility is tolled.

Freeways are not free to drive on anyway anyways you have to pay for the freeway to be built. The tooth fairy doesn't build it. You you also pay for wear and tear and gas and the tax. So if the term freeway doesn't apply for a tollway because you pay tolls, how does it apply for a road you still have to pay to use anyways even if it's not directly

[Plutonic Panda]

I may make a lot of people on here hate me after saying this, but selfishly I want the housing market to collapse, cause I want to buy a row home in San Francisco so bad.

Unfortunately, San Francisco is one of very few places in the Western US where real estate values have actually increased year over year. That's thanks in part to the AI spending boom and some of the companies associated with it being headquartered there. If the AI bubble pops and causes a lot of tech industry workers to lose their jobs then it could affect the San Francisco housing market. BTW, housing in other parts of the Bay Area, such as San Jose, is in a downturn, like much of the rest of California.

Long term: things home owners have been used to, such as extracting wealth out of one's home (borrowing against equity, reverse mortgages, etc.) could come to an end or at least get a lot more difficult. Retired age people wanting to down-size into smaller, more affordable homes may end up trapped in their McMansions they bought 10-20 years ago. That's due to the steepening downslope of America's demographics. Falling birth rates and shrinking immigration levels will greatly reduce the amount of future home buyers. Japan has a glut of abandoned homes no one wants that are falling into ruin; the homes are nicknamed "Akiya." Tax costs and renovation costs are tough barriers to overcome. Most of those homes stay empty. In America we already have a decent amount of Akiya houses in small towns and rural areas. As our demographics picture worsens the problem will become more widespread.

I may make a lot of people on here hate me after saying this, but selfishly I want the housing market to collapse, cause I want to buy a row home in San Francisco so bad.

Unfortunately, San Francisco is one of very few places in the Western US where real estate values have actually increased year over year. That's thanks in part to the AI spending boom and some of the companies associated with it being headquartered there. If the AI bubble pops and causes a lot of tech industry workers to lose their jobs then it could affect the San Francisco housing market. BTW, housing in other parts of the Bay Area, such as San Jose, is in a downturn, like much of the rest of California.

Long term: things home owners have been used to, such as extracting wealth out of one's home (borrowing against equity, reverse mortgages, etc.) could come to an end or at least get a lot more difficult. Retired age people wanting to down-size into smaller, more affordable homes may end up trapped in their McMansions they bought 10-20 years ago. That's due to the steepening downslope of America's demographics. Falling birth rates and shrinking immigration levels will greatly reduce the amount of future home buyers. Japan has a glut of abandoned homes no one wants that are falling into ruin; the homes are nicknamed "Akiya." Tax costs and renovation costs are tough barriers to overcome. Most of those homes stay empty. In America we already have a decent amount of Akiya houses in small towns and rural areas. As our demographics picture worsens the problem will become more widespread.

Yeah, but I'm wondering what the rise of AI if all of the tech sector is gonna decentralize sort of like what's happening in Hollywood with the entertainment industry, decentralizing and moving all over the place. I mean it is bad here.

[kphoger]

I've heard this on this form and I've heard this from engineers ...

You heard correctly.

Edward M. Bassett The Man Who Gave us "Freeway"
by Richard F. Weingroff

Taking the parkway concept a step further, a New York City lawyer named Edward M. Bassett is credited with coining the term 'freeway' to describe a controlled access urban facility based on the parkway concept but open to commercial traffic. ...

Bassett saw 'freeways'—i.e., highways for the free flow of traffic—as adapting many of the parkway design concepts to serve transportation instead of recreation.  Where parkways were dedicated to recreation, the freeway was dedicated to movement.  To make the distinction, he delineated three kinds of thoroughfares:

• A "highway" is a strip of public land devoted to movement over which the abutting property owners have the right of light, air and access.

• A "parkway" is a strip of public land devoted to recreation over which the abutting property owners have no right of light, air or access.

• A "freeway" is a strip of public land devoted to movement over which the abutting property owners have no right of light, air or access.

Bassett, writing as President of the National Conference on City Planning, explained his concept in an article in the February 1930 issue of The American City:

... It connotes freedom from grade intersections and from private entrance ways, stores and factories.  It will have no sidewalks and will be free from pedestrians.  In general, it will allow a free flow of vehicular traffic.  It can be adapted to the intensive parts of great cities for the uninterrupted passage of vast numbers of vehicles.

[Plutonic Panda]

Very interesting about a parkway. I had just always assumed that was a word to make the road more appealing to those who don't like the idea of having a freeway next to them. It seems like it would be easier to tell someone you're gonna build a park next to their house rather than a freeway.

[Bobby5280]

Yeah, but I'm wondering what the rise of AI if all of the tech sector is gonna decentralize sort of like what's happening in Hollywood with the entertainment industry, decentralizing and moving all over the place. I mean it is bad here.

The tech industry is already pretty de-centralized. However with the AI part of it there is a concentration of executives and senior engineers located in San Francisco. That concentration of top-level jobs could change. Some of these companies are bound to fail. There are too many parallels between this AI fad and the dot-com bubble of 1999. Lots of companies in that era disappeared and a few survived. We're bound to see the same thing happen. Of the companies that do win/survive their bosses may not necessarily stay put in San Francisco.

Just in case anyone gets it confused, data centers don't do shit for local job creation other than the work to build the facility. Once it's opened the facility employs minimal staff numbers and is more of a suck on local utilities than anything else. A silicon chip fabrication facility is another matter. They do employ more people (high skilled workers even) and aren't nearly as much of a drain on local power and water sources. Unfortunately companies like TSMC won't build chip fabs in American locations without some nice sweetheart deals to avoid taxes.

One other thing currently propping up home values in San Francisco: the nature of the K-shaped economy. The most wealthy Americans can afford homes in San Francisco. So they buy houses there because they can. However, San Francisco does not in any way represent the rest of the national economy. But shit that is happening in the rest of the economy can eventually drift into San Francisco. Polling numbers on how Americans feel about the economy are at least at their worst since the height of the Covid pandemic, if not the worst since 1980. Anger in the general public is worsening. If sentiment gets bad enough the bottom 90% of income classes will get out the torches and pitch forks for the top 10%.

[Scott5114]

The tech industry is already pretty de-centralized. However with the AI part of it there is a concentration of executives and senior engineers located in San Francisco. That concentration of top-level jobs could change. Some of these companies are bound to fail. There are too many parallels between this AI fad and the dot-com bubble of 1999. Lots of companies in that era disappeared and a few survived. We're bound to see the same thing happen. Of the companies that do win/survive their bosses may not necessarily stay put in San Francisco.

Eh, not exactly; a lot more of tech is centered in the San Francisco area (or more accurately the Silicon Valley area, which is further south in the same metro) than you'd think. The reason is because the nation's first semiconductor companies (chiefly Shockley Semiconductor and its descendants) were located in that area. That meant if you had an idea for a tech company and wanted to stand it up quickly and hire good talent, it was in your interest to move to Palo Alto, San José, or whatever because that's where all the people that knew where stuff worked already lived and worked, and it was a lot easier to just go to them than to try and convince them to start over somewhere else. This ended up becoming self-perpetuating, especially once the schools in that area (e.g. Stanford) started focusing on tech and so not only did the Bay Area have access to experienced workers but also a stream of fresh graduates with relevant education.

There has been a little bit of decentralization in that some of it has relocated to the Seattle area (because of Microsoft and Amazon) and Austin (because Californians just like sitting in traffic that much that they'll move to other cities that allow them to do that) but the bulk of it remains in the Bay Area. Salt Lake had a little bit at one point; don't know if it's still there since a lot of the Utah tech companies have gotten bought out over the years. Las Vegas has some if you consider slot machine development and manufacturing to be "tech". But if you're a tech worker and interested in actually doing something big with your talents then Silicon Valley is still the place to be since that's where the jobs are, and if you're a company it's the place to be because it's so hard to replicate the SV talent pool anywhere else in the US. That has its downsides (SV has gotten pretty myopic with the AI bubble and is making a lot of stuff they don't seem to understand that nobody else wants, nor why they don't want it) but it is what it is.

The thing that a lot of people further east don't seem to get is that Californians by and large really like California and don't want to leave it for piddling reasons like housing costs unless they have no other choice in the matter. There was a line in Arrested Development where, when the prospect of moving was raised, the family matriarch declared "I'd rather be dead in California than alive in Arizona". That is really not all that far off from most Californians' view of the matter. You do get some people moving out of state and some of them like it enough to stay, but many others get homesick and end up returning because CA has a lot to offer—geographically, culturally, politically—that other states simply don't have. Las Vegas kind of has a revolving door of Californians moving here and leaving. That kind of sentiment means that you probably won't see the primarily California-driven tech sector change much.

[Bobby5280]

One potential wild card with the Bay Area's supposed lock on the high tech sector is foreign-born talent. The tech industry has become increasingly dependent on foreign-born scientists, engineers and software developers. Some of those foreign-born workers become company executives or even CEOs. Those people aren't as emotionally attached to California as someone who was born and raised there.

The American government's tactics of pissing off long time allies and taking increasingly racist stances on immigration threaten to shut off that foreign-born talent pipeline. That would put Silicon Valley in a pickle. Oh, what's that? Hire American born workers in those positions? There are too few of us capable of filling those positions. Americans have taken it for granted how our nation has attracted the best and brightest from around the world for its entire history. We've also taken it for granted that major technological developments always happen here. All of that could change. Other nations aren't sitting still.

America's tech sector is already very dependent on supply chains outside of the country. It may only be a matter of time before those other countries get a lot more competitive at attracting talent that would have otherwise come here. And then they just cut us completely out of the loop.

[Scott5114]

One potential wild card with the Bay Area's supposed lock on the high tech sector is foreign-born talent. The tech industry has become increasingly dependent on foreign-born scientists, engineers and software developers. Some of those foreign-born workers become company executives or even CEOs. Those people aren't as emotionally attached to California as someone who was born and raised there.

It's not exactly a "born-and-raised" attachment in a lot of cases. One common situation we see a lot of in Las Vegas is that Californians will move here thinking they will save a lot of money on housing and taxes or whatever. Then they realize exactly how much of their medical bills MediCal was picking up, and that other states don't really have an equivalent system. So even with the cheaper housing cost in Nevada, they aren't really coming out ahead here, so they move back to California.

Or they like hiking. Hiking, as it exists in the West, is not really a thing in the Plains. You need something resembling mountains for that. Something like the Arbuckles and Wichitas would do in a pinch, but they're small enough ranges most hikers would probably get bored with them after a while. And there's nothing really like that close to Austin.

Or they like surfing. Can't really do that in Austin, and you'll freeze your nuts off if you try it in Seattle.

Or they like types of food that are readily available in California but not elsewhere. I've gotten addicted to birria (a style of Mexican food from Jalisco) since I moved to Nevada. As far as I know there wasn't anywhere that sold it in Norman (we just had the Chihuahua-inspired Tex-Mex stuff, which I like well enough, but it's not birria), so if I ever moved back I'd sorely miss it. California has even more types of food than Nevada does.

Or they make friends in California and don't want to leave them. If you like hiking or surfing or birria or whatever you'll find like-minded people you can make friends with and go hiking and surfing and to the birria shop or whatever with them. If you're a person who made all their friends by going hiking with them you're going to struggle to make friends in Austin. (The Oklahoma/Texas equivalent is going to the lake, but going to the lake and going hiking are way different experiences.)

[kphoger]

Hiking ... there's nothing really like that close to Austin.

https://maps.app.goo.gl/6wnohW6HNKUnPXk96
https://maps.app.goo.gl/C1x4c3uPsUzTztMr9

I've gotten addicted to birria (a style of Mexican food from Jalisco) since I moved to Nevada. As far as I know there wasn't anywhere that sold it in Norman

El Toro Mexican Grill:  924 W Main St, Norman OK

Quesabirria El Toro — A delicious fusion of tender birria and melted cheese, all wrapped in crispy golden tortillas, fresh onions with a side to dip in consommé.

Pizza Birria —  Two golden flour tortillas with birria and tasty melted cheese, grilled peppers and onions topped with cilantro and crispy onion sided with consommé dip.

Birria en Salsa — Beef cooked in our own rich salsa that gives the meat depth of flavor, served with warm tortillas, cilantro, and onions.

Ramen Birria — A delicious hot bowl of ramen noodles generously topped with melted cheese, onions, cilantro, hard egg, and finished with our birria.

Meat Fries — Crispy fries topped with juicy birria, nacho cheese, melted cheeses, sour cream and finished with fresh guacamole and drizzle cilantro.

Bir-Rito — A tasty and juicy birria burrito, stuffed with refried beans, rice, melted cheese, sour cream, onion, and cilantro.

Torta De Birria — A large Mexican-style sandwich filled with tender birria and refried beans, topped with cheese, fresh onions, and cilantro, all on a toasted bun.

Mickey'z Corner:  323 White St, Norman OK

Birria Queso Tacos
Birria Burrito
Birria Quesadilla
Birria Ramen
Birria Ramen & Tacos
Single Birria Taco

Birria meat options:  goat / beef / chicken / pork

[Bobby5280]

I don't think the El Toro Mexican Grill restaurant in Norman is related to El Toro in Lawton. But the Lawton restaurant has several different Birra-style items on its menu. The Perfect Bite on the West side of Lawton has Birra Tacos and Birra Quesadillas. The old stalwarts (Salas Urban Cantina and Los Tres Amigos) haven't updated their menus to include any Birra-style dishes.

Back on California, the living cost situation is bad enough that California recently reported a modest net loss in population of 54,000 residents (after 3 years of slight increases). Over 200,000 residents moved to other states. Net legal immigration has dropped more than 50%. "Natural" increases, aka births, offset deaths by 100,000. Births also helped put a dent in the losses from outmigration.

California is a wonderful place to live if you make a lot of money. The state is great for people in the top part of the K-shaped economy. But that high-pay group is a minority. The people at the larger, bottom portion of the K aren't living so great.

The company that bought our sign company is based in the LA area and they have multiple facilities in California. But if they tried forcing me to transfer from OK to CA they would have to more than double my pay, if not triple it, to even get me to think about moving out there. Otherwise I'd quit and find another job. I'm not moving to a "cool place" only to live in poverty or at best struggle financially. Lawton has all kinds of drawbacks. But I can afford to live here on my own, in a 2-bedroom house located in a good part of town, with no roommates and a commute time of less than 10 minutes.

The foreign-born talent situation (and what our current government is doing to repel it) is pretty scary when considering possible long term consequences.

American universities got fat and complacent banking off foreign-born students and pricing out a lot of American-born students. The elite level universities have been really bad in that regard. Normally these foreign-born students would stay in the US, become naturalized citizens and contribute to the economy by pursuing their careers here. There is a growing trend of foreign-born students coming here to get their education and then taking their skills back to their home countries or other nations. If that trend becomes a long term new normal those former American-educated students will strengthen colleges and universities outside the US. America will see another one of its advantages get eroded.

I personally worry about the health care situation. Even here in Lawton a large portion of doctors and specialists are not American-born. Some of these medical professionals have been here for decades and hitting retirement age. With America not being so welcoming to immigrants lately the shortage of doctors and nurses will somehow have to be filled more by American-born workers. We don't have enough of those people who can make it thru nursing school, much less full blown medical school.

[Scott5114]

The company that bought our sign company is based in the LA area and they have multiple facilities in California. But if they tried forcing me to transfer from OK to CA they would have to more than double my pay, if not triple it, to even get me to think about moving out there.

They probably would. When my wife tells Nevadans how little she was paid in Oklahoma, they're generally aghast that anyone could be expected to live on that kind of wages.

[kphoger]

Even here in Lawton a large portion of doctors and specialists are not American-born. Some of these medical professionals have been here for decades and hitting retirement age.

My mom was a career nurse since about 1973 or so, and I can tell you that's no surprise to me.

With America not being so welcoming to immigrants lately the shortage of doctors and nurses will somehow have to be filled more by American-born workers. We don't have enough of those people who can make it thru nursing school, much less full blown medical school.

I don't understand wanting to cut down on the number of skilled, educated immigrants.  To me, that seems like a win-win for us:  we get the talent but don't have to pay for the education.

[Great Lakes Roads]

The OTA will be awarding a project on the July 7th commission meeting-

1. EWC-28801A - Grade, Drain, Bridge & Surface (Interchange reconstruction at I-44/OK SH-37)
Allen Contracting, Inc. & Shell Construction Co. Inc (Joint Venture)
$75,353,097.85
East-West Connector Turnpike Toby Keith Expressway
CONST
ACCESS Bond Program

[Bobby5280]

My guess is that $75 million project is the new distributed diamond interchange for I-44 & OK-37 to replace the outdated trumpet interchange there. Most DDI projects can be done in the $20-$30 million range. The remaining funding would probably be covering the main lanes of the future turnpike going from I-44 to the new crossing over the Canadian River.

The DDI with I-44 and OK-37 is one thing. All the connector ramps for US-62, I-44 and the Toby Keith Turnpike are worth a lot more money. Maybe some of the $75 million for this phase could cover some improvements to the I-44 main lanes or some grading work for the future connector ramps.

[rte66man]

This will tell you what you want to know:
https://accesspubinv.transportationplanroom.com/interchange-design