Ride Photos 21

Oklahoma City and Oklahoma County are supposed to be working on replacing some damage to the bridge over Crutcho Creek on Midwest Boulevard. I noted some two years ago when the road was blocked off that there never was any significant damage to the bridge, just that the guardrail was bent over. The contract has been let, I believe, and the repair should begin sometime during the 2023 calendar year. Meanwhile, I’ve been riding across the bridge ever since it was first closed. The system of barriers went from temporary safety striped wood on metal frames to K-rails, AKA Jersey Barriers. And then more K-rails were added, but it was never enough to hinder bicycle access, just make it a little more annoying.

A couple of weeks ago, I found one of the K-rails on the south end of the roadblock had been moved and a large chunk broken off (1st image). Notice on the ground the drag marks where the rail had been pushed. Off to the right of this, there was an oil trail running into the ditch, and the drag marks where a large vehicle had been removed. Stop and think about what kind of speed that vehicle was going to break a K-rail and move it that far. Worse, the vehicle would have been traveling in the opposite lane to strike at that angle.

For whatever reason, the K-rail was replaced with standing stripe barriers mounted in the asphalt surface of the road itself. The one that the car had to hit first before it hit the K-rail is still lying on the ground; this is three new ones. It was a little interesting to use my old traffic investigation skills to discern what had happened. And of course, it had no effect on my passage through this road block.

I’ve noted in the past that the geographical name of Draper Lake is East Elm Creek Reservoir. Draper is the name for the recreational feature and the large land confiscation to form a park. The reservoir sits astride East Elm Creek, filling a rather large network of feeder creeks that had created a rather wide and deep canyon. While riding on the bikeway around the lake the other day, it occurred to wonder if I could find the original creek bed below the dam. Lo and behold — it’s still there. What may be hard to tell is that a small bridge crosses the creek, right about where it makes a sharp right-angle turn out from under the dam. At one end of the bridge is a large culvert, of which only the bare end is visible, running straight back under the packed earth dam.

For people who are curious, the concrete companies that make Jersey Barriers have several different styles of that size, various lengths, and then multiple other sizes. For example, the Colorado Barrier is 5 feet high, the Alaska Barrier is 10 feet tall, and the Texas Barrier 6’8″. While I was serving in the Military Police we had to know what to call the ones commonly used by the military worldwide.