A HEFTY TOLL
Deadly intersections in areas like Tishomingo ignored while millions spent on turnpikes
In March 2022, the city of Tishomingo suffered a horrific tragedy when a gravel truck traveling at high speed collided with a small sedan at the intersection of State Highway 22 and U.S. 377. This juncture features an obsolete design that merges high speed traffic at a triangle with poor visibility. Tragically, six young women — all high school students — were killed. In such a small community, there is no escape from the devastation of this loss.
Grieving families need closure, and closure requires answers from the public officials who chose to ignore this dangerous intersection for far too long. Unfortunately, the Oklahoma Department of Transportation is trying to avoid responsibility and has filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit brought by the victims' families. We believe it is essential for this case to move forward. Our research shows that instead of making essential safety upgrades in Tishomingo, ODOT chose to spend millions on unnecessary projects that mainly benefit private interests.
The Oklahoma Highway Safety Office has recorded at least 10 separate serious crashes at the Tishomingo intersection over the span of a decade. In Johnston County (home of Tishomingo), the rate of fatal crashes has been twice as high as the state average for at least five years. Overall, rural highways account for nearly 60% of all fatalities and serious injury crashes in Oklahoma.
Instead of allocating funds to repair deadly intersections in rural areas like Tishomingo, however, ODOT spent millions subsidizing the Oklahoma Turnpike Authority's construction of the Gilcrease toll road in Tulsa. This co-mingling of funds was lauded as a “publicprivate partnership,” but this self-congratulatory rhetoric masks an important question. Why? Why was ODOT using state and federal tax dollars to build an unnecessary 5-mile toll road instead of prioritizing essential safety improvements in rural areas of the state?
According to the turnpike authority's own traffic study, the Gilcrease Turnpike was predicted to save just one to three minutes of travel time over existing routes — hardly sufficient to justify $250 million in construction costs.
A credit rating analyst agreed, describing the project as having “limited essentiality.” The Gilcrease Turnpike is popular, however, with the Tulsa and state Chambers of Commerce and other private entities who stand to benefit from residential and commercial real estate development along the new road.
With this precedent in mind, we invite all Oklahomans to question the wisdom of the proposed ACCESS Oklahoma toll road expansion plans announced in 2022. ODOT and OTA are now planning to borrow at least $7 billion to build new urban loops around Cleveland County instead of undertaking long overdue repairs and improvements to the state's rural roadways. There is no independent oversight to prevent this kind of spending.
Unless some measure of accountability can be established in the Transportation Department, all Oklahomans will be forced to endure more burdensome debt, more unnecessary construction and more tragic deaths on neglected rural roads.
Derek Burch, an Oklahoma City attorney, is representing the families of the Tishomingo crash victims. Derek Burch is an Oklahoma City attorney. Katherine Hirschfeld is a professor of anthropology at the University of Oklahoma and a board member with Oklahomans for Responsible Transportation. Richard Labarthe was an attorney for the Open Meetings case against the Oklahoma Turnpike Authority.