By Steve Berg
Work starts in about a month for a long-awaited and much-needed project to widen Highway 169 in Owasso between 66th Street North and 86th Street North.
ODOT spokesman T.J. Gerlach says they haven’t selected an exact starting date yet but says it will happen sometime during the first two weeks of February.
The project will expand that two-mile stretch of 169 from two lanes each way to three lanes each way.
Gerlach says the extra lanes will be added to the area of the existing median, so he says they’ll be able to keep all the existing lanes open during the entire project, lessening the impact on traffic.
“So it’ll just be narrowed, and we will have a lower speed limit in place, so it’ll just be a little bit slower, but not too impactful,” he said.
Compared to a lot of big road projects, this one will be relatively fast, taking about 6 months to complete, Gerlach says.
Traffic levels on 169 in the Owasso area have increased considerably, going from approximately 60,000 vehicles per day in 2019 to around 75,000 per day currently.
