I've long thought that about 35 and 44. Ardmore would be a good start for a lot of distribution and manufacturing considering it's location between OKC and Dallas. I'm not sure how it would work with the area between OKC and Tulsa considering there's no real decent sized towns out there. The ticket there might just be Tulsa getting growing faster than it is and maybe building some industry along the turnpike in the small towns.
Too bad Stillwater isn’t another 40 miles to the south along I-44. I don’t see too much growth happening in Chandler, Stroud or Bristow. Oklahoma can’t even get a slow train up and running between OKC and Tulsa, high speed rail to Texas seems like a far off fantasy at this point.
yep, I was going to say OKC-DAL-HOU is totally doable even just considering the premium business traffic it could capture. Might be less of those execujets however but a 1-3 hour trip would negate the air hassle.
Oklahoma City, the RENAISSANCE CITY!
I went to a public meeting for this, it was a joint meeting with ODOT and TXDOT. Basically they said a private entity is already going to build an HSR between Dallas and Houston and they wanted to explore if there was value in extending it up to OKC. I _THOUGHT_ that I had heard construction of the Houston/Dallas HSR was underway by now but not sure where things are between ODOT/TXDOT extension wise.
Link to Tex project:
https://www.texascentral.com/alignment-maps/
I would love to see how the rail alignment could go from it's current termination point south of Downtown through the north part of the city to Denton. The cost would have to be astronomical.
Hopefully, Stillwater can quit struggling to get over the 50,000 mark in population in time for 2020, if it hasn't already. The Stillwater micropolitan area increased by only 173 people in 2018. Maybe Cushing is still having trouble holding on to its numbers. If all the traffic lights downtown are still flashing red after the 2016 earthquake, it's giving off a foreboding, uninviting impression of the town at least to me.
Maybe it's already been brought up in this long, old thread, but Oklahoma needs to eliminate the state corporate income tax to help Oklahoma City and Tulsa grow. I think the only thing that would block doing that is failure at the state capitol on how to hike taxes or create a new tax to make up for lost revenues. But maybe a case can be made with doing nothing after corporate income tax is abolished.
But, but, then corporations wouldn't be paying tttttttaxes!
Lets take this back to topic
I do. (just kidding)
To be real, though, Oklahoma City is the only part of the state that is growing. Tulsa is treading water. The rest of the state is essentially dying, both economically and in terms of population. And when you witness the moronic politicians from Oklahoma's rural areas, it's not hard to understand why young people and smart people in those places want to GTFO ASAP (unless they inherit the family business).
So OKC is growing in spite of this state.
Certain people who live in OK see what goes on in OK end think it's such a horrible place. Texas passes laws that are similar or worse than OK yet it can barely keep up with its population growth. People in California are doing all they can do to overtax and eliminate their middle class so that it's getting where the only people left are entertainers, high tech workers earning huge salaries end mega-wealthy IPO moguls. For all the complaints from Dems about wealth disparity, all they have to do is look at their own state. The point is, most all states have their own problems and the grass in OK may be more green than most negative Okies realize.
That is generally true, but lets give credit to a couple of exceptions to the rule. Durant and to a less extent Stillwater have been growing. If some of the Tulsa suburbs hadn't been growing fast, metro Tulsa would have a loss.
I think you'll find Oklahoma is no different from other states. The rural areas have been slowly draining out for years, while the major metro areas are quite likely the only places where there is some degree of growth.
Tulsa metro has still seen 5.7% growth since 2010, it has slowed in the past couple years with the pullback in the energy industry which has also slowed growth in the OKC metro and across the state (especially the NW counties).
Outside of the OKC and Tulsa metro area counties, Payne County due to OSU and Bryan County due to DFW spillover you won't see much growth or more likely continued population decreases in every other Oklahoma county. Comanche County could see growth due to Fort Sill, same with Garfield County due to Vance AFB. As DFW continues to march north you could see growth in Love and Marshall counties. Delaware County in NE OK attracts a number of retirees to Grand Lake so it could see growth as well as spillover from fast-growing NW Arkansas,
I will be interested to see how all of our census data comes out next year. Hopefully we don't lose out on an electoral vote!
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