OK City Not OK for Walking

"Streets getting the most critical eye from Speck include Hudson Avenue between Reno Avenue and Robert S. Kerr Avenue. Those trying to cross the six-lane street Thursday included Henry Jerome, 34, who was on his way to the Oklahoma County Courthouse."

"'This is why I don’t come downtown,' Jerome said. 'I thought parking would be bad, but it really wasn’t. But this street — it’s ridiculous. And all these one-way streets are scary. Why does it have to be this way?'"

"According to Speck, it doesn’t. Speck showed the downtown street configurations to traffic engineers outside the state and their first response was to guess the street grid was set up for a downtown density and traffic volume comparable to Chicago or Manhattan."

"'They said this is a street network that will support three to four times the density it is handling,' Speck said. 'Then you look at the traffic counts, and only a few carrying 10,000 a day. And 10,000 cars a day is easily handled by a two-lane road.'"