The idea is to plan and fund restorations or replacements before the heavily-used bridges age into disrepair. The plans could also enable the city to add bike lanes or sidewalks.
Six of the bridges are on the west side of town, where they cross Deep Fork Creek, the North Canadian River or one of the North Canadian’s tributaries.
Those bridges are crucial for the area’s large-scale manufacturing, OKC Public Works Director Debbie Miller wrote in a statement. Several of them, like the one on Portland Ave. pictured above, are along EMBARK bus routes.
The second set of 9 bridges span Lightning Creek on the city’s south side. Miller said this grant provides an opportunity to design bridges that catch trash and debris before the waterway carries it into the section of the North Canadian known as the Oklahoma River.
One of the bridges, where SW 29th St. crosses Lightning Creek, sports a mural celebrating Oliver Park and the Capitol Hill neighborhood.
“As the planning process commences, we can determine the options for rehabilitation or replacement of the bridge, including what options the neighborhood/community might prefer with regard to the mural,” Ryan Baker with the OKC Planning Department wrote in an email.
These grants, which were announced in early August, will fund Planning and Environmental Linkages studies, which aim to integrate community, environmental and economic goals. The studies are a required first step in the federal Bridge Investment Program, which funds both planning grants and construction grants.
Baker wrote the city’s planning study grant and said they intend to submit the bridges for construction grants down the line.
This isn’t Oklahoma’s first Bridge Investment Program grant. Last month, the Oklahoma Department of Transportation received $142 million to replace the Roosevelt Memorial Bridge, which spans almost 5,000 feet over Lake Texoma between Kingston and Durant.
In 2022, the state received a $1-million dollar federal planning grant to assess that bridge. In its description for that project, ODOT said the 80-year-old bridge is “functionally obsolete and at risk of falling into poor condition and becoming structurally deficient.”
