The answers you get depend on the questions you ask, and on who you ask. For state and OKC regional transportation planners and public officials, the answer to the above question is "YES." In fact, they seem to have already moved on to the next question: "Where do we put it?" But their answer to the first question-widely supported but reached with hardly any public discussion-has serious implications for the lives of all present and future OKC area residents. We need to take a thoughtful look at how the planners and politicians arrived at their answer, and decide whether we agree before allowing them to move on.

OKC area planners have a problem: traffic congestion on I-35 and I-40 is getting worse over time. Their solution is to build more roads: they're now taking a serious look at a prospective Outer Loop highway because it's an easy, predictable solution (many other cities have already done it). Even though the Loop wouldn't be built for 20 years if approved, the planners have to think that far ahead in order to preserve the Loop's right-of-way now, while it's still available.

The advantages of having an Outer Loop are obvious: better mobility for vehicles, at least for the first few years, and promotion of economic development along the Loop's path. But are the planners and politicians thinking about the possible negative sides? What happens after the first few years, when the number of cars & trucks expands to fill the available roads? Will congestion be just as bad then? If so, we will have spent billions of dollars for only temporary relief. What will happen to OKC's central areas? Do we wish to promote the "flight to the suburbs" syndrome that so many other U.S. cities have already experienced? Will more highways make us even more dependent on the automobile for our travel needs? Will this further isolate non-drivers? Is this the kind of transportation system we want?

More subtle are questions of what KIND of economic development we want. Big highways, cheap gas, and available land are the key ingredients of "urban sprawl:" low-density, car-oriented development. Sprawl has been the status-quo in American cities for decades. But it's been largely unregulated, resulting in strip malls and subdivisions spread out over farms, forests, and wetlands. Sprawl means more trips on highways in individual vehicles, leading to more serious injuries and fatalities in traffic accidents. Sprawl means more gasoline consumption, causing more dependence on foreign oil and more emissions of carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas.

Highways promote sprawl. But highways are partly built with general tax dollars (i.e., above & beyond the gas tax), amounting to a hidden sprawl subsidy. Why shouldn't the users of roads be fully paying for them? If drivers had to pay the full costs of roads, perhaps we'd have fewer roads and more alternatives to driving. Moreover, within cities, local taxes collected from low-density residents often don't cover the full costs of providing their city services and utilities, meaning that taxes from high-density areas are siphoned off to make up the difference. Another hidden sprawl subsidy.

It doesn't have to be this way. In the downtown areas of several East and West Coast cities, many people don't have cars because they don't need them to get around. Our cities could move in that direction if that's what we want. At the national level, fighting urban sprawl is now one of the Sierra Club's top priorities. At the state level, I'm serving as the Oklahoma Chapter's representative on the OKC Outer Loop Advisory Committee that's guiding the current Loop evaluation process. To date, the Chapter hasn't taken a formal position on the issue; it's still early in the process, and Chapter leaders need feedback from the membership. So think it over, discuss it with your colleagues, and inform your Chapter/Group leaders of your opinions. It's the only way to make our collective voice heard.

Return to the Oklahoma Sierra Club Chapter’s Sprawl page.

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