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Commissioner Pearson
In The News . . .
Wed, 17 Jun 2009
Commissioner Pearson said the funding decision was recently confirmed by a committee of the State of Oklahoma's 5th Circuit Engineering District (CED). The funding is part of the state's County Improvements for Roads and Bridges program (CIRB).
Pearson asked the CED board to approve the rehabilitation of a four mile portion of Midwest Blvd. from Waterloo to Forrest Hills Rd. and the one mile section of Forrest Hills Rd. from Midwest Blvd. to Pine St. The board agreed to place the project on the CIRB five-year plan. Engineering on the project is slated to start in 2012.
Pearson said the board also approved the funding of a portion of Luther Road from Waterloo going north, which is set to commence shortly after the Midwest project. Person said that while his priority is on paving roads in the I-35 area of District 2, it appears there is significant multi-county interest in developing the Luther area in conjunction with the opening of a new exit ramp on the Turner turnpike.
Pearson said that in preparation for asking for the funding change he took the important step of starting the reclassification process of Midwest Blvd.
After taking office Pearson commissioned his staff with the responsibility of assessing traffic counts and road classifications in an effort to lay the groundwork for an aggressive effort to bring state transportation funds into Logan County. "When I campaigned for office it was on a platform of incorporating a program to bring in outside funds in the same manner as District 1 Commissioner Mark Sharpton has done over the past few years," Pearson said. "In order to start this effort we had to properly classify our roads."
Pearson said that District 2 employees discovered the district was using an antiquated system for designating what are known as collector miles which are used by the state to determine if new road funding should be issued to the county. "We actually had one road which was only averaging nine traffic counts per day but was designated as a major collector road. It simply makes no sense that District 2 has not been designating some of its most heavily traveled roads as collector roads," Pearson explained. "Over the last few months we have embarked on an assessment of these miles based on new traffic counts, and now that we can prove the need for funding we are going to push for as much of it as possible."
Pearson said the new traffic counts show that thousands of vehicles are traveling the south part of the district on a daily basis, including between 3500 - 4000 on South Douglas near Waterloo road.
"Very busy roads such as Pine, Midwest, Charter Oak and Douglas have not historically been designated as collector roads. We are going to change that in order to get funding for the rehabilitation of these roads," Pearson explained. "If we can fund a quality paving job on these roads then our resources can be freed up to better maintain the roads in the north part of the district which don’t need paved, but need better on-going maintenance"
"Make no mistake about it, District 2 is experiencing tremendous growth and we are going to work hard to leverage this traffic into road funding," Pearson said. "The latest infusion of road funding is just a first step!"