Redoing Tulsa's Boston Avenue

A major new street project starts in the spring in the heart of downtown Tulsa. The city plans to redo Boston Avenue. <br><br>The project starts next spring - but it's actually been in the plans

Monday, October 20th 2003, 12:00 am

By: News On 6

A major new street project starts in the spring in the heart of downtown Tulsa. The city plans to redo Boston Avenue.

The project starts next spring - but it's actually been in the plans for a long time. News on 6 reporter Emory Bryan has the story.

The actual Main Street is one block over, but Boston Avenue for most is Tulsa's â€˜Main Street.â€™ Soon Boston will look more like a main street - with wider sidewalks, more trees, with traffic moving in both directions - the way it used to be. The way Jim Kirkpatrick remembers it. "That would be great you have to go around and everything to get where you need to go now, rather than going the direction you want to go."

Boston Avenue is one way north of 10th Street, but the city plans to change that. "This was funded by the 1996 sales tax, so it's been in the works for a while." The city spent years planning the Boston rehab project and it starts next spring. Henry SomDeCerff, Design Engineer: â€œthe overall intent was to widen out the sidewalks from 12 to 20 feet to give us more rooms for trees and sidewalk cafe seating things like that.â€

The city plans to narrow Boston Avenue to two lanes of traffic from 3rd down to 7th. From 7th to 8th Boston will be 3 lanes, including a turn lane - from there the street will be four lanes down to 10th Street and beyond.

The changes for Boston include a return to 2-way traffic, with a narrower street and wider sidewalks. The city says it will try to minimize the inconvenience, but the whole project will take almost a year. Voters approved the $3 million project that will make Boston look more like the new â€˜Main Street.â€™

The city thinks it will improve the look of downtown - and set the stage for the Vision plan to take it even further.