You may notice some downtown Tulsa streets look a little different.
Third Street has been striped with bike lanes and new, on-street parking spaces from the bridge over the Inner Dispersal Loop to around Lansing Avenue. That will continue through early next year to the western edge of downtown.
The same will happen on Archer Street and many others.
"We are finalizing striping plans for Boulder, Sixth, Seventh and 10th to occur later on 2019, and then Cheyenne will follow, I believe, in 2020/2021, depending on the construction timeline," said Downtown Coordinating Council Executive Director Brian Kurtz.
The city is converting Cheyenne Avenue from a one-way to a two-way street. That work includes improvements to comply with the Americans With Disabilities Act.
Kurtz said those changes are aimed at slowing traffic and encouraging people to stay downtown, though other, less dramatic measures are also being considered.
"When a street light converts from red to green, that all traffic signals at the intersection remain red for a period of time so that we prevent cars from flying through," Kurtz said.
Kurtz said the city has implemented only about 10 percent of recommendations from a 2017 walkability study at this point.
One change will be noticeable much sooner: The replacement of downtown Tulsa parking meters should be done early next year. The last of 175 new meters will be delivered before the end of the year. Then comes six weeks of programming work before planned installation by the end of February.
"So, at that point in time, all of the meters south of the railroad tracks that are — broken, I think is the best way to talk about those — will be completely replaced with new, digital kiosks that are multi-space meters and they are pay-by-plate, similar to the ones we have north of the railroad tracks," Kurtz said.
The kiosks accept cash or credit cards, and they can be used with an app that already covers hundreds of parking spaces downtown.
