A DEVELOPING STORY
Broadway Extension legacy includes questionable planning, missteps
For the first time in my memory, motorists are being kept off Broadway Extension for an extended period of time as one of the last and oldest sections of the corridor is torn up to make way a wider, modern highway.
Driving along Broadway Extension still allows for a glimpse here and there of what it once was — a rural two-lane street connecting the state’s capital with a small farming suburb several miles north.
It wasn’t until the 1960s that the highway began to emerge from this two-lane country road, and even then, the design and planning was awkward and never quite right for the growth that was to follow.
Planning started after World War II as returning soldiers started families and started buying homes further away from the central core. Industry was moving away from what is now known as Bricktown and settling along the BNSF tracks between NW 36 and NW 50.
At the same time, city fathers went on an annexation spree expanding the city limits to Edmond, then a remote suburb.
Broadway Extension actually began as a what was really “Robinson Extension” with highway engineers building a
a four-lane highway from what was a residential two-lane Robinson Avenue between NW 36 and NW 30 in the historic Edgemere Park.
Robinson was converted into a three-lane road with overhead signals changing the direction of the middle lane based on morning or evening rush hour.
The street turned into the highway with a bridge spanning NW 36 that was built in the 1960s along with a major cloverleaf interchange at I-44.
Traffic counts along Robinson Avenue in Edgemere Park climbed to 40,000 vehicles a day. No neighborhood should endure such an invasion.
Yet in those days, without a court battle and lawmakers at your side, these sorts of highway engineering transgressions were routine across the country.
Engineers were, and to some degree still are more focused on doing what’s best for free-flowing traffic with little training or concern for planning and neighborhoods.
By the 1970s, the historic apartment buildings along Robinson were a mess. Highway engineers started to turn their attention to building what is now the I-235 Centennial Expressway that would go further south and over a rail yard.
Edgemere Park residents took the Oklahoma Department of Transportation to court and convinced powerful lawmakers to take up their cause.
Highway engineers suggested the apartment houses that were blighted — as a result of their original planning — be used as a buffer for the rest of the neighborhood.
The residents went to court and asked state highway officials pay to remove the worst of the blighted structures and instead build a wall and a tall landscaped berm.
With lawmakers adding such requirements into annual funding for the agency, the residents managed to score a win. Work proceeded in the early 1980s, though a promised access road to create rear parking egress for the remaining apartment houses was never created.
As these battles and more waged with the south half the highway, the state attempted to fix one issue after another on the older section between NW 36 and Edmond.
Fencing was added on each side of the highway because children from an adjoining school started running across the busy corridor.
Wood post and metal railing medians were upgraded to concrete barriers.
Repaving and pothole repair became a constant issue as the highway strained from traffic counts far greater than its designed capacity.
Funding for a rebuild was slow but steady, and at one point thenGov. David Walters proposed converting the highway into a turnpike to quicken reconstruction.
Edgemere Park is once again a thriving historic neighborhood, thanks to the battles waged by its residents.
But further south, completion of the highway killed the predominantly black Harrison-Walnut neighborhood, as well as much of Deep Deuce.
By the time I-235/Centennial Expressway was opened in 1989, it represented everything the rest of Broadway Extension was not — wide open with three lanes on each side and generous shoulder lanes with good on and off ramp lead lanes.
Within a few years, everyone agreed it was time to rebuild Broadway Extension between NW 36 and Edmond. Work began in 1999. We’ve been at it ever since.