SIAP

I was driving I-40 today and noticed how few exits there are for downtown. And none of the exits were labeled as downtown. Usually in a city you will see exit signs on the freeway telling you which exit to take for downtown, for the arena or any other points of interest. If someone didn't know where they were going, it might be difficult for them to know where to exit to get downtown. It's almost as if we don't want them there.

I think that the new downtown boulevard will take care of that once it is competed. they have exits that serve the arena and convention center off 1-40 but it is not as close to downtown as the old I-40. The boulevard is the downtown spur.

Does anybody remember how many downtown exits they removed when I-40 was realigned? It seems like there were several, but I could be mistaken...

SIAP

I was driving I-40 today and noticed how few exits there are for downtown. And none of the exits were labeled as downtown. Usually in a city you will see exit signs on the freeway telling you which exit to take for downtown, for the arena or any other points of interest. If someone didn't know where they were going, it might be difficult for them to know where to exit to get downtown. It's almost as if we don't want them there.
It may now be as much as you want, but there is definitely a sign on I40 going East before the Shields exit about exiting there for several downtown attractions.

Does anybody remember how many downtown exits they removed when I-40 was realigned? It seems like there were several, but I could be mistaken...

This is kind of what I thought.

This is kind of what I thought.

There were 2 exits each for westbound and eastbound traffic on the old crosstown. There are the same today.

There were 2 exits each for westbound and eastbound traffic on the old crosstown. There are the same today.

Thanks. I guess it just *seemed* like there were more. Funny how memory works (or doesn't work, as the case may be), isn't it?

Walker had a ramp I think. But I honestly don't remember if the total number was different.

For some reason I'm thinking that with all the old one-way traffic we had a lot of different on/off ramps based on which direction you were going.

The current off ramps might be in different locations than they were on the old crosstown, but it's still 2 exits for downtown whether you're going east or west. One might even argue that once the crosstown blvd gets built, there will be 3 exits for downtown when you're heading west.

The best visual for this is to go look at google earth and go back in history a bit to look at the old crosstown.

Walker had a ramp I think. But I honestly don't remember if the total number was different.

For some reason I'm thinking that with all the old one-way traffic we had a lot of different on/off ramps based on which direction you were going.

Well, it depends how you count exits. I know there was at least one exit that then branched off into two or three different ones...the exact configuration escapes my memory because I always wanted the first one on the left once you exited. But a vague hint of a memory says the branch that went off to the right then divided into two. And of course there was that "back alley entrance" onto westbound I-40, I really miss that one.

Thanks to the magic of Google Street View, and despite the complications of Google Street View having the I-40 footage from 2007 but not being able to follow the track of the old I-40 because there is no "new" street there yet, I took an trip down Eastbound I-40 and there were the following exits, starting at Western:

Exit 149A: Western/Reno
Exit 150A: Walker
Exit 150B: Harvey
Exit 151A: Lincoln

I think Westbound there were only:

Exit 150C: Robinson
Exit 149A: Western

New I-40 has:

Eastbound: Western, Shields, (+ eventual connection to the new boulevard)
Westbound: Robinson, Western, (+ eventual connection to the new boulevard).

There is also an exit each direction which serves both Agnew and S. Penn.

Eastbound 149A was the one I was thinking of, and I *thought* the branch to the right went to Western/Reno, but didn't the branch on the left go to Sheridan? Let me rephrase...it absolutely positively 100% went to Sheridan, but maybe since you could then turn onto Western they counted it as Western? You exited directly onto Sheridan, but no need to merge with traffic because Sheridan was Westbound only at that point. Anyway, that's what I meant by I think it was a triple exit. One exit from the highway, if you then went left, that's Sheridan. If you went right instead, that's Western/Reno, but since I never went that way I'm not certain if the branch to the right then forked into two, one for Western and one for Reno, or not.

The new "boulevard" is basically one big exit ramp.

SIAP

I was driving I-40 today and noticed how few exits there are for downtown. And none of the exits were labeled as downtown. Usually in a city you will see exit signs on the freeway telling you which exit to take for downtown, for the arena or any other points of interest. If someone didn't know where they were going, it might be difficult for them to know where to exit to get downtown. It's almost as if we don't want them there.

I'm gonna respectfully disagree. Our skyline is nothing like Chicago's, but our downtown is still clearly visible from all 10 lanes of I-40. It's fairly easy to tell when you're going to exit for downtown and and when you're not. And with the advent of GPS/Garmin/Google Maps/etc, signs like "downtown" have gone by the wayside in other cities as well. And there are plenty of exits for downtown - there's no shortage of them. As much as the new I-40 was overbuilt, it is nice that he center of our city is no longer defined by an ugly slab of concrete - until the BLVD is done anyway.

We will get a defacto "Lincoln exit" back when the boulevard opens since it connects to Lincoln. Also, since the boulevard is one big ramp. :-)

I'm not entirely sure what the cause of this is, and it's hard to divine one without asking the signage engineer who drew up the plans. If I had to guess, it's because there's a clause in the MUTCD that discourages street names and city names from being on the same sign panel (e.g., something like "S.W. 134th Street, Moore" is not allowed).* The idea here is to keep from overloading the driver by separating destinations from street names, putting them on a separate (usually ground-mounted) panel if needed. "Downtown" is not exactly a city name, but the engineer may have decided to follow the spirit of the rule instead of the letter and leave it off the exit names.

In a situation like this, a sign reading "Downtown, next X exits" would be appropriate and completely within the rules. Maybe someone should suggest it to ODOT.

*There are more than a few examples of this on existing signs because the rule is somewhat recent. Additionally, when signs are replaced, their legends are sometimes copied over to the new signs for whatever reason, even if the governing rules have changed.

I dunno, I kinda agree with no1cub17 in that if you need a sign to find Downtown OKC, a sign probably wouldn't help. I mean come on, even before Devon tower was added you could see Downtown from Yukon. Add in the GPS found in every phone and almost every car, and what's the point in spending money on a sign? Spend the money repainting the stripes in the road, there are sections of I-40 where the reflectivity has worn off and if it's nighttime and raining, you just hope and pray you're in a lane because you really have no way of knowing.

Don't get me wrong, I agree it would be "nice" to have a sign. I also believe it would be "nice" to have a million bucks, but that doesn't mean my bank is going to put that into my account. Since I don't have that million bucks, I have to carefully weigh purchases against the money that is in there and spend it on needs rather than wants.