Lawton’s Road Construction Wouldn’t Be So Bad If People Knew How to Drive

Hardly a day goes by that Lawton's social media isn't filled with complaints about the road construction we've begged for so long.

Our roads here aren't the best, but they're not the worst in the state. And even though politicians from the city council all the way to the mayor's office have promised new roads every election cycle for at least my twenty years here, even the nice ones like Cache Road have been neglected to the point Lee Boulevard doesn't seem so below average anymore.

During all of this, it's important to remember that there's really not much-promised road work going on... It's waterline work.

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Is there road work going on? Yes, but along our busiest road through town, in the location everyone seems to be picking bones over, it's not road work. When it's all said and done, we'll still have the same desintegrating stretch of pavement--except for the half-lane strip and new Eastbound curbs the contractors are putting back in for the waterline project.

Even so, we're used to having three Lee Boulevards through Lawton by now. The roads are just a distraction from the real issue.

If people knew how to drive, nobody would be complaining.

Like as many people as possible, I have avoided my regular commute down Cache Road since the first cones went up in 2023. Like so many others, I've opted for Gore Boulevard across town, which has opened a whole new set of crevasses in the concrete on that stretch of road too.

Once in a while I'll need to go down Cache for one reason or another and think "I'm sure it'll be fine," which is hasn't been, not once, yet.

The construction isn't the problem though. It's our fellow motorists surrounding us. In a military town, tags from every state in the nation converge on Cache between Southwest Mazda and Home Depot.

On our last snow day, I met some people for lunch at Rib Crib, and this little 3/4-mile stretch took me 12 minutes to drive. Not because there was so much traffic, but because so much of that traffic doesn't know what basic driving habits are. Things like zipper-merge or the camaraderie of we're all in this together.

Instead, and I'm sure you either see or do this yourself, it's carmageddon. A first come, first served smorgasbord of being 18 feet closer to the same red light.

We've gone full McDonald's.

44th and Cache Road Eastbound is like the dual-drive-thru at every fast-food restaurant in existence. You want to be ahead of the other driver even though the alternative is waiting an extra twelve seconds.

One car won't let another merge, then the car behind them does the same, and so on... Pretty soon, the mile-long line in the only passable left-hand lane is half a mile long, and the wait to merge is twice that.

It's not long before horns start honking and fingers start flying.

How long is this thing supposed to take?

While the City of Lawton has a contractual agreement to a deadline somewhere printed on their chaotic website, and the rest have been published behind media paywalls, I seem to remember there being a goal date of somewhere between April and July 2025. Just depends on which public works sign on which site you're looking at.

Still, with the standard weather provisions that are generally included in every work contract like this, it might be right on time. It's the forest for the trees. It looks like carnage at the moment, but a house never looks like a house until you're given the key anyway.

There's hope.

In the meantime, if you drive these roads, try to remember this. We're all experiencing it the same as you are. It's OK to let one fellow motorist merge, but while allowing two would be polite, you'd be messing up the entire system laid out in the American traffic code.