The Oklahoma Turnpike Authority halted work on the $5-billion ACCESS Oklahoma turnpike improvement project in mid-April, citing several lawsuits and an agency audit by the state’s attorney general office that will create difficulty to sell bonds for the project.
The decision ends all engineering and road work, except for a small portion of the Turner Turnpike expansion, one of the projects comprising ACCESS Oklahoma. The project entails widening a section of the turnpike from four to six lanes between Oklahoma City and Bristow, the state’s two largest metro areas; constructing reliever routes to the south of Oklahoma City; and adding additional on- and off-ramps to the existing turnpike to increase traffic safety for the state’s rural areas.