OU-Tulsa Students Show Off Bike-Friendly Designs For Arkansas River

Some OU-Tulsa students have their own ideas about what the west bank of the Arkansas River could look like.

The overall design process has been two semesters in the making. And while it’s just a concept now, bike enthusiasts like Marshall Lind say it shows the true vision of biking in Tulsa.

“I love the idea of taking an ambitious plan and taking the whole River Park and Turkey Mountain to a whole new level,” he said.

Development is happening all around Tulsa, but there’s potential for even more growth; and the Visions for the West River Bank target bicyclists like Lind.

"It gives you some positive hope for Tulsa in the future," he said.

Forty OU urban design and architecture students have worked on the designs for nearly a year.

4/4/2016 Related Story: OU Students Team With Tulsa Tough For West River Bank Designs

The designs show what the west bank of the Arkansas River and Turkey Mountain bike-friendly development could look like.

"With past projects that we've done, this often starts the dialogue going, and people start thinking about things and doing things," said OU urban design director, Shawn Schaefer.

It’s a dialogue Tulsa Tough executive director Malcolm McCollam is eager to get started. He approached OU-Tulsa back in September.

"Nobody has ever come here to take it this far to come up with a concept," he said.

McCollam said the student designs are visionary, and he hopes the community sees potential - allowing development to move forward one day.

Lind said, "I think, as usual, the difficulty comes in finding the funding for something like this."

Tulsa Tough said the next step is to get cost estimates on some of the designs and figure out where to go from there.