Turnpike frustrations continue in Norman

Yahoo

18 hours ago

NORMAN, Okla. (KFOR) — Norman city taxpayers sounding the alarming over a proposed turnpike making its way onto a agenda item at Tuesday nights city council meeting.
Item number 30 on the agenda showed the 2045 Transportation Plan map with a route for a turnpike in east Norman.
It's the same route on The Oklahoma Turnpike Authorities Access Oklahoma website. This same route was shot down almost a year ago.
RELATED: OTA says plans still in the works for southern turnpike expansion in Norman, asking for community input
City leaders at the meeting said the transportation map is apart of routine update every 10 years.
'A lot of this is being used for us as a planning document for us as we look for as our transportation design is developed so just because its shown here doesn't mean that we are saying that we are going to go out an construct it as an x or a y road way,' Scott Sturtz, Director of Public Works, said.
However, those who attended the meeting say this isn't what Norman needs.
'The strong towns committee which Mayor Heikkila appointed me to found 87 empty commercial properties in core Norman and we could do a lot better job by in filling our core Norman except that we continue to give developers the a-okay to blow into east Norman,' Amy Cerato, Norman Resident, said.
Volunteers with Pike Off OTA, the collective group against the turnpike authority, do not understand why its on the map in the first if city leaders say it's not going to happen.
'If that's true, then why put it on the map? Why put a route on the map that, you know is not going to be the right one? It'll destroy East Norman. It'll just do that. East Norman is a treasure,' Dave Moore said.
The Turnpike Authority says they are currently in study session for that proposed turnpike to move the future project further west as instructed by city council.
City council approved the transportation plan at Tuesday's meeting.
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