LAWTON – The numerous traffic disruptions and detours here are a sign of progress, Mayor Stan Booker and Councilman George Gill contend.
The City of Lawton is engaged in “the largest street improvement program here in more than 50 years,” said Gill, chairman of the City Council’s Streets and Bridges Committee.
Booker announced his “10 Wins for the Citizens” mill-and-overlay street improvement project in October 2023. Those 10 streets were completed by Feb. 27, 2024 – 19 days ahead of schedule, Gill reported.
Subsequently the goal was expanded to 40 streets throughout the city and was renamed “On Target, On Time.” Booker said he wanted all 40 projects to be finished by Thanksgiving Day 2024. “We didn’t quite hit that deadline, but they’ll be completed soon,” the mayor said recently.
Gill’s goal for the city’s mill-and-asphalt-overlay program is now “105 in ’25!” he declared at the council meeting Jan. 14.
Two dozen of those streets have already been selected and approved by the City Council for improvements. “While we wait on the funding for those projects, we can get ready to go out for bids on them,” Gill said.
The list of the next 81 streets proposed for mill-and-overlay work will be presented to the council soon for their review and approval.
Previously the city budget for street maintenance and repair was $1.5 million, but now with the mill-and-overlay program underway the budget is $10 million, Gill said.
“Thanks to PROPEL 2040, we now have the resources to ‘throttle up’ and ‘accelerate into the future,’” Booker asserted in his New Year message. 38th St. rehab project to start in a few weeks A major transportation project that’s expected to start in a few weeks is a mill-and-overlay job on 38th Street between Gore and Lee boulevards.
Repairs will include deep patching, some additional curbs and gutters, and “smoothness” work to eliminate washboard wrinkles in the pavement, Chris Serrano with WSB consulting engineers in Oklahoma City told Southwest Ledger. “This should extend the life of the street for five to 10 years, if it’s properly maintained,” he said.
The cost to rehabilitate that thoroughfare is estimated at $5.6 million.
“Several years ago the cost of upgrading that street was estimated at over $30 million, and it would have taken three years to finish the job,” Gill said. In contrast, the mill-and-overlay project will take an estimated six months to complete, he said. “Three engineering firms recommended we mill-and-overlay that street,” Gill added.
By doing a mill-andoverlay rather than complete reconstruction of the street, no water line relocation or replacement will be necessary, the councilman said.
“We want to go out for bids in February and start the work in March,” Gill said. “At least, that’s the plan; we just need to put the funding in place.”
Thirty-eighth Street is a well-traveled traffic corridor in Lawton. In 2020 the street carried an average of 13,000 vehicles per day just north of the Ole Kim Lane entrance to Cameron University, and 9,900 vehicles per day a short distance south of Southwest J Avenue, an Oklahoma Department of Transportation traffic study showed. Goodyear Blvd. rebuild, West Gore widening, Wolf Creek bridges Two other major transportation projects are underway.
Goodyear Boulevard is being rebuilt for approximately 1.3 miles: from the railroad crossing just north of Southwest Neal Boulevard and extending north to Cache Road. The City Council awarded a $4.98 million contract on that project last May to T&G Construction, and the job is still underway. That project is being financed from the 2019 PROPEL Capital Improvement Fund, records reflect.
West Gore Boulevard is being widened from two lanes to five between 67th and 82nd streets. When the project is completed, the section line road will have four driving lanes, a center turn lane, and bicycle lanes. Traffic interruptions have been attributed to grade, surface, and drainage projects along the route. Construction is expected to continue into May.
The two narrow, aged Wolf Creek bridges on Southwest 11th Street between Interstate 44 and Southwest Pecan Road are scheduled for replacement this year. The new structures will accommodate two wider lanes plus shoulders, a city official told the Ledger last year. “We anticipate bidding on that project in June,” Interim Engineering Director Mike Jones told the Streets and Bridge Committee on Jan. 14.
Lawton’s streets have suffered from decades of inattention. Priorities established by the Streets and Bridges Committee are based at least in part on a pavement assessment that was completed in 2022. The evaluation concluded that 37.7% of Lawton’s streets were rated “good” to “excellent,” while 62.3% of them were deemed to be in “fair” to “very poor” condition.
Speed bumps eyed In a discussion about lead-footed drivers and the city’s traffic “calming” efforts, Gill said speed bumps “are getting more popular” and Mayor Booker “likes speed bumps.”
Gill suggested establishing a policy in which the City of Lawton would pay for two rubber speed bumps installed in each of the eight wards, “and any more than that would be paid from each council member’s ward funds.”
Councilman Allan Hampton proposed perhaps “a study on our schools and whether they need speed bumps” to get motorists to slow down in school zones. Gill embraced that idea and recommended collecting similar information from peer cities, such as Norman.
The city “really would like to install traffic cameras in school zones to catch and deter speeders,” but state law prohibits that, City Manager John Ratliff lamented. Instead, “We have to station a po lice officer there.”