The Tulsa City Council and other area leaders took a bus tour of Route 66 in Tulsa County to spark ideas for the corridor’s revitalization.
Voters recently passed the Vision Tulsa sales-tax initiative, which included a few million dollars for Route 66 investment, plus a new bus line along the 11th Street (aka Route 66).
Longtime Tulsan and “Route 66: The Mother Road” author Michael Wallis led the tour on one of the city’s buses (and dislocated a finger during a fall). The Tulsa World reported:
“You don’t even realize the scope of what we have in Tulsa on Route 66,” City Councilor Anna America said. “We do a terrible job of capitalizing on that. There’s limited signage and limited opportunity for people to know where to stop and shop on Route 66.” […]
“Looking at it today, we have all kinds of shops and things to do,” America said. “We need to direct people there. … There’s 2 million that drive the (national) length of Route 66 every year, and we lose them on stopping here because we don’t have the signage.”
KTUL-TV and KOTV also reported on the bus tour.
From KOTV:
“There’s not good signage,” said Ken Busby of the Route 66 Experience. “They don’t know where they’re supposed to go, and they’re not getting anything in social media or elsewhere marketing Route 66.” […]
“What can we do better on signage? What can we do on marketing, to make people stop and explore the rest of Tulsa,” Busby asked.
City councilor Jeannie Cue agreed.
“We’ve lost thousands of dollars of revenue over the last 20 years of people coming along route 66, and we want to capture that money,” Cue said. “We want them to spend the night, we want them to see Gilcrease, we want them to see Philbrook.”
Based on these reports, it appears there’s a sort of consensus that’s emerged on one thing the city needs to do.
(Nighttime image of the east Route 66 gateway in Tulsa courtesy of the city of Tulsa)
They’re finally starting to wake up and see how bad the route is through Tulsa. We’ve been through there several times but never stopped because it’s so hard to navigate through. If they fix this mess maybe we’ll be more inclined to stop and stay awhile.
Great to see city leaders so willing to learn!