LAWTON – Speed bumps, the 38th Street rehabilitation project, and plans for the “105 in ’25” mill-and-overlay program, were reviewed recently by municipal officials.
The City Council authorized the staff to solicit bids on the mill-andoverlay project on 38th Street between Gore and Lee boulevards. “For five years and one month I have been waiting for 38th Street to be done!”Ward 3 Councilor Linda Chapman exclaimed.
Repairs will include deep patching, additional curbs and gutters, and “smoothness” work to eliminate washboard wrinkles in the pavement, Chris Serrano withWSB 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.
By performing a milland- overlay rather than complete reconstruction of the street, no water line relocation or replacement will be necessary, Councilman George Gill said.
By going out for bids in February, perhaps construction can start in March,” Gill said. “At least, that’s the plan; we just need to put the funding in place.” The cost to rehabilitate that thoroughfare is estimated at $5.6 million.
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.
In a related matter, on Feb. 11 the city’s Streets and Bridges Committee (which has since been renamed the Streets, Bridges, Traffic, and Development Committee) reviewed Chairman Gill’s “105 in ’25” proposed list of additional Lawton streets that will be improved in mill-and-overlay projects.
Two dozen of those streets have already been selected and approved by the City Council for improvements. Public Works Director Michael Watrous said the budget still includes $1.8 million for street and bridge projects in Fiscal Year 2025, which ends on June 30.
Mayor Stan Booker announced his “10Wins for the Citizens” mill-andoverlay 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 in January.
Traffic-taming speed bumps; streetlights The Streets and Bridges Committee also spent some time discussing speed bumps as “traffic calming” devices.
Traffic calming “techniques” were developed to “reduce speeding problems and heavy flow on residential streets,” the city’s Public Works Department related.
Ward 6 Councilman Bob Weger told the committee that he received nine requests recently, asking city officials to install speed bumps in neighborhoods where children are “walking and playing.” Motorists are speeding through neighborhoods, “seeking to avoid construction zones,” he said. “They’re just flying by.”
Citizens should present their requests for speed bumps to their specific City Council member, and the city’s Engineering Department will perform an analysis of each site to determine whether a traffic calming device is warranted there. The council “makes the final determination,” Gill said.
An amendment to a City Council policy that pertains to Neighborhood Traffic Calming Procedures provides that each of the city’s eight wards can receive two speed bumps per year paid from the city budget, and at least two more through their council member’s ward funds.
Each council member can use his/her surplus ward funds to buy even more speed bumps or security cameras, spend it to clean up neighborhood trash sites, or for some other public purpose, Gill said.
Ward funds are replenished quarterly from gate fees at the sanitary landfill south of town, City Manager John Ratliff noted. The balance in six ward accounts last June was almost $28,000 each, and the other two ward accounts contained more than $23,000 each.
The Streets and Bridges Committee also discussed two particular types of speed bumps: modular, manufactured from recycled PVC or from rubber, and permanent units made from asphalt or concrete.
A modular unit costs approximately $7,000, while an asphalt speed bump costs about $4,000, Gill said.
Although it’s cheaper initially, “If you build one with asphalt, it takes city crews away from filling potholes,” said Cliff Haggenmiller, deputy director of the Public Works Department.
Modular units are prefabricated, durable, and can be moved to different locations. Modular speed bumps the City of Lawton buys are designed to withstand the impact from vehicles traveling 25 miles per hour, Serrano said.
Also, a modular unit can be easily removed to make a street repair, and then simply anchored down again when the job is done.
Gill’s committee also will consider proposing a city policy about streetlights in subdivisions. “We need to establish some sort of policy as to when we should recommend that developers place street lights at various locations in a new subdivision,” the councilman told the Ledger.
Public Service Co. of Oklahoma, Lawton’s electricity provider, “will be a big player in this, of course,” Gill said. And the City Council will make the final decision because “we pay for those lights,” he noted.