The city of Edmond, Oklahoma, has begun preliminary talks with the state Department of Transportation to take over Route 66 and U.S. 77 in town.
The Oklahoma-based NonDoc journalism site had the story:
“The discussion we have with ODOT is, ‘is there a future where they do a full reconstruct of (Route) 77 and 66 to our standard and once they do that we’ll take it on as a city street, which means that alleviates them from ongoing (operations and maintenance) costs, but we get a street that’s more conducive to economic development,’” Edmond City Manager Scot Rigby said.
Due to the state’s jurisdiction over those roads, there are added bureaucratic steps and decisions that must be made prior to any changes to those routes. The transfer of those highways to arterial roads would give the city more streamlined control over those routes, said Montie Smith, ODOT’s administrator of legislative affairs. […]
“The offer we have is some up front cash, then [ODOT] gets out of long term [operations and maintenance],” Rigby said. “They’ve got a whole state to deal with [for operations and maintenance.] We take on eight miles or whatever the frontage is, get it to our design standards and our development standards and become a much more functional community.”
Rigby said it may take five to 10 years to transition Routes 66 and 77 to city ownership.
It’s not mentioned in the story, but I suspect Sapulpa, Oklahoma’s takeover of Route 66 from ODOT is a significant motivation for this move by Edmond.
Sapulpa held several years of talks with the state to take over ownership of old Route 66 through the city, which it completed about a year ago. This enabled Sapulpa to temporarily close Dewey Avenue (aka Route 66) in its downtown so it could erect its massively successful Route 66 Christmas Chute, along with other events and projects.
(Image of an Oklahoma Route 66 sign by edward stojakovic via Flickr)