Convention Center

[shawnw]

It is going up, just not as quickly

[ChrisHayes]

when may we start to see the Omni hotel go up?

It's already going up. They're starting work on the second floor.

[stile99]

when may we start to see the Omni hotel go up?

A month and a half ago.

https://www.okctalk.com/showthread.p...62#post1063562

[Pete]

Pretty well topped out now but still tons of steel to go outward.

[warreng88]

I imagine the AV on this will be a monster...

[HOT ROD]

surprised there are so many columns. I thought there was a push for modern cc's to be mostly column free for the exhibit halls. ...

[Rover]

surprised there are so many columns. I thought there was a push for modern cc's to be mostly column free for the exhibit halls. ...

Don’t think this part of the structure is exhibition space.

[Pete]

The general plan for Robinson now involves a roundabout at SW 7th and a signaled pedestrian crossing at NW 5th; the convention complex is centered on 5th. There will also be dedicated bike lanes and sidewalks.

These are from a MAPS 3 Board meeting today.

[Pete]

BTW, you can see they have already put the parking, sidewalks and curbs along the west of Robinson.

The wide concrete section running E/W into the park will be the location of the signaled pedestrian crossing at what was SW 5th.

[Scott5114]

I'm a little amused they end one lane of Robinson approaching the roundabout like cowards instead of forcing Oklahoma City to learn how to use a two-lane roundabout. (Diagrams for multiple-lane roundabouts exist in the Manual of Uniform Traffic Control Devices, but I don't know of any that have been built in the metro.)

[Plutonic Panda]

It looks like Broadway Ave realignment is no longer happening? They plan on shutting down that road completely?

I agree about the roundabout. I would like to think it’s a space issue but that’s obviously not the case. They need to build it as a two lane roundabout. They aren’t that hard to use.

[Pete]

The Broadway realignment is still happening, just south of SW 4th, which has always been the plan.

[Plutonic Panda]

Ah. Thank you for the information.

[fightlessllama]

Just going off the preliminary plans above there seems to be a missed opportunity to actually make the west side bike lane protected like the image below. Now it's just a recipe for car doors hitting cyclists, for cars having to cross the bike lane to park, and no buffer between moving traffic and cyclists.

I understand the need for potential food trucks being able to park next to the park and that there's probably not going to immediately be enough cyclists to justify it but this street feels like the natural corridor following the upper and lower parks for bike commuters from the southside and also downtown/midtowners connecting to the river trails. Could eventually see high volume cycle traffic. Seems very shortsighted.

[Pete]

^

Bike lanes on OKC streets continue to be an afterthought if they are even considered at all.

[Ross MacLochness]

yeah they even advocate for riding on the sidewalks on the 10 ft wide "multimodal" path. I bet as a defense, the city will say, no we have TWO bike options. The bike lane and the multi-modal path, what more do you want? But really both options are subpar. What if there are food trucks blocking the "bike lanes" and then there are long lines across the "multimodal path" blocking that?

[Pete]

It's actually infuriating to think that we have spent literally billions on new streets and infrastructure in the core -- with the unusual opportunity to design things from scratch -- and we still can't implement the most fundamental bike system that most cities have had for decades and did so without the luxury of completely rebuilding everything around it.

So now we'll be stuck with nearly new infrastructure that won't be touched again for decades. Talk about a massive missed opportunity.

This stuff isn't hard. Everyone else has already done the work to figure out best practices long before we went out and obligated billions. We just chose not to do what everyone already knows should be done.

[DoctorTaco]

It's actually infuriating to think that we have spent literally billions on new streets and infrastructure in the core -- with the unusual opportunity to design things from scratch -- and we still can't implement the most fundamental bike system that most cities have had for decades and did so without the luxury of completely rebuilding everything around it.

So now we'll be stuck with nearly new infrastructure that won't be touched again for decades. Talk about a massive missed opportunity.

This stuff isn't hard. Everyone else has already done the work to figure out best practices long before we went out and obligated billions. We just chose not to do what everyone already knows should be done.

Thanks JIm Couch.

[Ross MacLochness]

To be fair though, it's pretty easy and cheap to re-stripe a street and add vertical dilineators. Might not be as permanent looking as a concrete barrier but works just as well.

[Ross MacLochness]

To be fair though, it's pretty easy and cheap to re-stripe a street and add vertical dilineators. Might not be as permanent looking as a concrete barrier but works just as well.

Which also is aggravating to think about because of how cheap and easy it really is compared to other types of infrastructure improvements, yet our bike lane infrastructure is minimal and we widen roads all the time.

[fightlessllama]

Basically repeating what you're saying Pete and beating this dead horse but even I, having spent my entire life in Oklahoma and not even riding a bike that often, know that the two below images are vastly different in actually getting people to bike and being safe doing so. Like you said, these things have already been established in road/bike planning as the go-to design especially when you're creating an entire street and park from scratch.

[fightlessllama]

To be fair though, it's pretty easy and cheap to re-stripe a street and add vertical dilineators. Might not be as permanent looking as a concrete barrier but works just as well.

Exactly! Even just painting some cheap stripes like below would be palatable. Doesn't even have to take up as much room as this example

[Pete]

^

Those examples aren't just a matter of painting lines. They require wide streets that can accommodate the required width.

There are some places where that isn't difficult but what is particularly inexcusable is not merely working to make the park a few feet narrower or pushing back the curbs a bit on the new OKC Boulevard... Or most of what they did in Project 180. That cost almost nothing.

Anyway, here we are in the current time where almost every city in the world has already figured it out and everyone with access on how to do this, and we simply ignore all that and saddle the city with really bad decisions, just like the dumb mistakes we made decades ago we are still trying to undo... And at fantastic cost with compromised results.

[Laramie]

Glad the bike lanes are being incorporated inside the core especially in the example above with the wide lanes. Plenty of space for pedestrians, bikes & traffic.

Great vision for OKC.

[Anonymous.]

Pete I would vote for you if you ran for City Council. Like you mentioned, we have a brand new, blank slate area and we still are not doing the best possible thing. It is pathetic.