The $33.3 million toll bridge at 121st Street and Yale Avenue is to be financed with private money and is expected to draw an estimated 7,500 vehicles daily at a cost of $1 each. To increase traffic by 7,500 vehicles on two-lane south Yale is to create a traffic nightmare on an already busy thoroughfare.

The only other access to the proposed bridge is 121st, westbound from Memorial Drive and eastbound from Riverside Parkway, a narrow two-lane, curving road that motorists would likely avoid.

When Woodland Hills Mall was proposed, the city required the developers to finance street improvements in the area to accommodate the increased traffic. Private investors who stand to profit from the Bixby bridge should be required to finance the widening of Yale.

The toll bridge reportedly is a welcome project for Bixby officials whose city stands to reap substantial benefits in increased taxes and development. Nothing wrong with that. Just don't do it at the traveling public's expense.

Virgil Hensley, Tulsa

Area residents say there should be no hurry to rush into a project that has so many detractors.

More questions about a private toll bridge were raised than answers provided during a fiery town hall meeting Monday night at a south Tulsa church.

The meeting was called by residents in 28 neighborhoods within the vicinity of the proposed $33 million Arkansas River toll bridge, which would connect an upscale area of Tulsa at 121st Street and Yale Avenue to Jenks at 131st Street and Yale Place.

"Tulsa has been without this bridge until now, so I ask again, what's the hurry?" Tulsa City Councilor Bill Christiansen said to applause from those gathered in the St. James United Methodist Church sanctuary.

"Let's take the time to be 100 percent sure that there isn't a better option that will facilitate regional development but without negatively impacting our south Tulsa residents," he said.

Tulsa County Commissioner Bob Dick said there would be no big hurry to build the bridge but that a private company, Infrastructure Ventures Inc., is willing to do the project now. He said he didn't know if the company would be interested four to five years from now.

Dick said none of the area residents attended public meetings that were held in 2000 regarding the 25-year long-range plan that called for the bridge. The commissioner suggested that homeowners appoint representatives to sit down with officials from the county, Infrastructure Ventures and other entities to go over the details of the proposal and come to an agreement on such things as estimated traffic count.

Christiansen said the bridge shouldn't be built without an independent study of how the project will affect traffic flow on the two-lane Yale Avenue and 121st Street, which flows west into a "dead man's curve" and eventually onto Riverside Drive.

Neighbors say the two-lane streets are ill-equipped to have an extra 7,500 cars a day -- the official estimate -- dumped on them. By 2030, the number is estimated to grow to 22,100.

Those crossing the bridge northbound will either continue north on the residentially lined Yale or go east or west on 121st Street.

About 35 percent of the bridge traffic is expected to travel north on Yale, according to a study by Wilbur Smith Associates.

Tulsa Mayor Bill LaFortune said he still wants to weigh the neighborhood's concerns about infrastructure and public safety with potential economic development and increased sales tax revenues. Three vacant corners of the 121st and Yale intersection are zoned for commercial development.

LaFortune said he and city officials are considering moving up area street upgrades on the improvement list. City Public Works Department Director Charles Hardt said resurfacing and adding shoulders to 121st Street is estimated to cost $4 million and that resurfacing Yale is estimated at $1.1 million.

Many of the neighbors said they're not opposed to the bridge but are merely concerned about safety issues and traffic, especially near Jenks Southeast Elementary School at 101st and Yale. Parents drop off their children on Yale, and children bike and walk across the street.

Others said they don't want the bridge at all.

Joe Tleimat of the Hunters Hills neighborhood said Infrastructure Ventures President Bill Bacon "has said he's never built a bridge."

Bacon owns Cinnabar, the company that handles the Tulsa International Airport noise-abatement program.

Susan Hylton 581-8313
susan.hylton@tulsaworld.com

Proposed south Tulsa span across Arkansas River would help traffic, business

Tulsa's advantage and its curse are the same: The Arkansas River.

The early advantages of being at river's edge are obvious. Transportation, and water (even if salty) for citizen and industrial use and disposal of the wastes from those uses.

But you have to cross the darned thing.

So, the city's earliest entrepreneurs ponied up the money to build a bridge at 11th Street to replace a crude ferry.

That united the toddling town in the beginning. Bridges still do that.

The first bridge in Tulsa, by the way, was a toll bridge.

That comes to mind nearly 100 years (and several bridges) later as 21st century entrepreneurs have stepped up to build another bridge across the Arkansas at Yale Avenue, far downstream from that first bridge.

One could argue that bridges across the Arkansas paced the city's development. Through the years the river was spanned at 21st, 51st, 71st, 91st and 96th streets.

The bridges were necessary because the city was growing and developing.

But each bridge also spurred development on both sides of the river.

Will the bridge proposed at roughly 121st and Yale be any different?

The bridge will be a cooperative public/private project. Infrastructure Ventures Inc. headed by developers Bill Bacon, Bob Parmele and Howard Kelsey will build and maintain the bridge, including the approaches to the intersections of 121st Street on the Tulsa side and 131st Street on the Jenks side.

As the project plans matured, the developers decided to include the intersections in their original project. A $1 toll each way will be used to retire about $25 million privately obtained revenue bonds. Investors will add about $8 million to that.

Ventures will maintain the bridge through the 75-year life of the project. The county will own the bridge from the start; Ventures will lease it. In the 11th year of the 75-year pact with the county, Tulsa County will begin receiving 10 percent of the net revenue from the tolls. That will be millions for the county. Also in the 11th year, the county will receive 2 percent of the gross revenue to be put in a re placement fund. At the end of the projected life of the bridge, the county stands to have $30 million or so on hand to either replace or rebuild the bridge.

Will the Ventures investors make money? Of course. That's why they are called entrepreneurs. They invest money in the prospect of making money. That is as American as apple pie.

The plans for the bridge were formally announced in March 2004. It has been enthusiastically accepted by city, county and business leaders. The attorney general has examined the concept and pronounced it legal. The Legislature has approved it.

Acting on those approvals, Ventures commissioned traffic studies by Wilbur Smith and Associates, a firm that has performed similar studies for the city of Tulsa for decades. In about 15 similar studies, the firm's estimates have been within plus or minus 5 percent eight times and within a 10 percent error range all 15 times.

Its findings: A tax-paid bridge without tolls would carry 14,000 vehicles a day. The firm estimates a toll bridge will capture about half that traffic. That means 3,500 vehicles in each direction. On the Tulsa side, that means traffic will not be greater than existing arteries like Yale and the River Road can handle.

The bridge will spur development and the odds are it will gradually handle much more traffic than that. So yes, at some point, the connecting arteries will have to be widened.

But what if earlier bridges had been blocked because once a bridge is built, you have to build roads on either side?

More than a year after the bridge was announced, after it was publicized in the World and other news organizations dozens of times, a group calling itself "Move that Bridge Association" has shown up. City Councilor Bill Christiansen, in whose district the bridge is located, assures them that "nothing has been cast in concrete." Maybe not. But the councilor should be informed that the traffic studies have been made, financing arranged and money invested.

Fewer than a dozen residents will be displaced. The project requires a tract that is owned by the city so the usual councilors are grumbling that they have to be consulted. The county, according to one, plans to use its power of eminent domain to buy the city property. Since 121st Street is a section line, there is adequate right-of-way elsewhere.

The protesters, true to form on other major projects like the 71st Street widening and the Creek Expressway, are arguing for other routes. They suggest -- after the bridge studies have been made with the current alignment -- that it ought to be in locations that would cost millions more and require Ventures to start over with traffic and feasibility studies.

In Oklahoma, it is common knowledge that the state doesn't have enough money to maintain the bridges it has, much less build a new one in Tulsa. Public financing of such a project would take decades, judging from past experience.

Here we have a novel, but sound financial method to build a needed and wanted bridge. If successful, the bridge could be a model for other such road-building projects. Is the toll objectionable? Well, yes. But for motorists who don't want to use the toll bridge, there are the bridges at Memorial, 96th, 91st, 71st, 51st, 21st and 11th streets.

It would be wonderful if Tulsans and Oklahomans -- in a burst of civic duty -- would raise taxes to the level that adequate roads and bridges could be built.

Meanwhile, let's get on with the private/public bridge at Yale Avenue.

Ken Neal 581-8308
ken.neal@tulsaworld.com