ODOT releases new rendering of finished Highway 75/I-44 interchange in west Tulsa

TULSA, Okla. — The Oklahoma Department of Transportation released a new rendering of the Highway 75/I-44 junction in west Tulsa, showing what it will look like when it is finished.

Because of COVID-19 precautions, ODOT released the rendering as part of a multi-page virtual open house.

In it, both highways have an extra lane added to them in every direction and the cloverleaf design that was there is replaced by flyovers to help traffic transition from one highway to the other. There is also a new frontage road connecting Skelly to East 61st.

The current phase happening now is primarily bridge replacement as part of the first of five work packages that will play out over the next ten years.

FOX23 was told that the junction no longer met modern standards and there were too many clogs and crashes because of a significant increase in traffic as the city has grown around it.

ODOT Spokeswoman Kenna Mitchell said drivers will notice the columns going up that will support the new flyovers, but those columns will not be holding up anything until a future work project is underway in a future phase of the project.

“It will look like a bridge to nowhere for a while, but they will be connected in the future.”

Mitchell said engineers and construction crews determined that the support columns were best suited to be built in work package one because of all the intense work already happening on nearby bridges and the actual road itself

You can view the virtual open house at this link: https://bit.ly/3cvnPMo.

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