plan process
 

Bicycle and Pedestrian


Bicycle and pedestrian facilities offer an alternative means of travel that provide users direct routes to recreational and non-recreational destinations


Bicycle and pedestrian facilities offered in the Central Oklahoma region provide alternative transportation options for users’ recreational and non-recreational needs. As an added bonus, such facilities promote healthy lifestyles and often enhance an area’s desirability for tourism and economic development. Similar to street and highway planning, these networks require coordinated planning among multiple jurisdictions, and should be linked to transit stops, schools, parks, as well as retail and medical centers to provide a useful transportation alternative. Bicyclists carry the same rights and responsibilities as motor vehicle drivers and are legal on nearly all public roadways in Oklahoma.

 

Safe Routes to School

Safe Routes to School (SRTS) was created in an effort to substantially improve the ability of primary and middle school students to walk and bicycle to school safely.



Source: http://www.saferoutesinfo.org/guide/images/home_header.jpg

The purposes of the SRTS program are to:
Enable and encourage children, including those with disabilities, to walk and bicycle to school.

  1. Make bicycling and walking to school safer and more appealing.
  2. Encourage children to be active and healthy from an early age.
  3. Facilitate the planning, development, and implementation of projects and activities to improve safety and reduce traffic around primary and middle schools.
  4. Lessen fuel consumption and air pollution in the vicinity of schools.

Oklahoma’s SRTS - Program Overview:
Oklahoma will receive approximately $1 million per year for five years.

Goods Movement

The OCARTS freight movement network is a well-established composite of trucking, railroad, and air cargo facilities.

Highways and truck traffic are critical components of the freight transportation system. The performance of the highway and street network is directly tied to the efficiency of truck transportation. Reliable travel times are critical to truckers who serve just-in-time manufacturing and distribution systems.

Shipments of consumer goods on rail are surging. In particular, rail-intermodal freight has grown tremendously over the past years. This trend is expected to continue, as it is unlikely, in the light of a doubling of freight demand over the next decades, that enough highway capacity can be built to accommodate expected future freight growth.

Air freight is fast and reliable, but is also more expensive than truck or rail freight transportation. Air freight, more than other modes of freight transportation, reacts sensitively to changes in consumer technologies, such as the “latest must-have electronic goods,” which are primarily moved by air due to their short product life cycle.

Streets and Highways


In the OCARTS area, automobile travel is still the preferred mode of transportation. The extensive street and highway infrastructure built to date, also constitutes the foundation of the overall regional transportation network.


se15-bridge_construction_OKC.jpg
Source: City of Oklahoma City
St&Hwy_OKC.bmp
Source: Tristate Transportation Campaign


The street and highway network of the Central Oklahoma region consists of the streets, thoroughfares, and highways that make up the regional roadway system. The OCARTS area network encompasses approximately 3,940 centerline miles of regionally significant roadway facilities, in addition to numerous local roads and neighborhood streets (which are typically under the care of local governments and are therefore not included in the regional street and highway network).

Without an accurate description of the roadway network, meaningful transportation modeling is impossible. Therefore, transportation data such as the functional roadway classification (collector, minor arterial, principal arterial, interstate, freeway, and turnpike), number of lanes and capacity – by direction, posted speed, etc. is collected.

Based on the roadway network attribute information as well as the current and forecasted population and employment data, transportation modeling is used to analyze several different future transportation scenarios, associated benefit-cost analyses, and related potential negative impacts to determine the most efficient and most cost-effective transportation network alternative.

 

Transit

Public transit in the OCARTS area includes traditional buses, flexible route service, services for the elderly/disabled, and demand response service.

Public transportation within the OCARTS area has several components. These include, but are not limited to, traditional fixed route bus service, flexible route service on evenings and weekends, specific services for the elderly and disabled, and demand response programs for rural portions of the region.

The Central Oklahoma Transportation and Parking Authority (COTPA), a public trust administered by The City of Oklahoma City, is the lead agency in designing, managing, and operating public transportation services in the Oklahoma City Urbanized Area. Cleveland Area Rapid Transit (CART), is the lead agency in designing, managing, and operating public transportation services in the Norman Urbanized Area. Other public transportation providers in the OCARTS area include Citylink in Edmond, First Capital Trolley in Guthrie, and Delta Public Transit in Cleveland and McClain counties.