Those who have driven the Turner Turnpike this past year have most likely dealt with all the construction heading west to Bristow.
But when will it be done?
With 2024 coming to a close, 2 News Oklahoma’s Douglas Braff checked in with the Oklahoma Turnpike Authority about where things stand.
The state is widening a six-mile stretch of highway between Heyburn and Bristow, expanding it from two lanes to three in both directions.
The plan is to eventually expand the Turner Turnpike between the Tulsa and Oklahoma City metropolitan areas from four to six lanes.
State leaders broke ground on the Heyburn-Bristow phase at the end of February, at the time saying this phase should be done in about 18 months. Assuming everything remains on schedule, that would mean completion around August or September 2025.
Braff sat down with Turnpike Authority spokesperson Lisa Shearer-Salim and asked her what the timeline looks like.
“So, we've got about another year's worth of work for the Bristow project,” she replied.
"It's about at the halfway point," she noted. "We're getting close to that. There is a lot of work still to go, and motorists can expect to start seeing more lane shifts."
“But overall, for the entire corridor widening, it's part of our 15-year-long, long-range plan called ACCESS Oklahoma. And we're about three years into that plan.”
The widening of the Turner Turnpike is a big-ticket item among many projects in the ACCESS Oklahoma plan, which aims to improve and expand upon the state's turnpikes.
Over the next 12 years, she told us motorists will see different projects along the Turner Turnpike — projects like the new interchange near Heyburn and Kellyville that just opened last week.
All this is a $2.5 billion investment into Oklahoma’s oldest turnpike.
But Shearer-Salim said, “You're going to see multiple construction zones” throughout the long-term initiative.
“We are working to space them out and to time them so that we're not just completely stalling traffic from the turnpike,” she emphasized. “We're doing our best to keep it open and traffic flowing as much as possible.”
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