City of Lawton may be ready to remove signal light on Gore Boulevard

Traffic flow patterns on West Gore Boulevard could be changing soon, if the City Council agrees with a recommendation today to remove traffic signal lights at Southwest/Northwest 4th Street.

While the council will be acting on a recommendation from the Traffic Commission, council members themselves directed the analysis last month while discussion traffic congestion on West Gore Boulevard, especially for drivers heading into east Lawton.

While the intersection has been controlled by signal lights for decades, those lights have been on blink mode — red for north/south traffic, yellow for east/west traffic — since May’s Arts for All Festival. But, council members and city staff said they have been getting complaints from residents about Gore Boulevard drivers who are stopping at the yellow lights and letting north/south drivers out onto the arterial, a situation some say has almost caused accidents. Traffic laws specify that while blinking red lights are to be treated as Stop signs, blinking yellow lights mean use caution, not stop.

“This change provides an increase in efficiency for the traffic corridor, while maintaining the necessary safe environment for our citizens to thrive,” city staff said in their agenda commentary.

Removal means taking out the lights and poles, then giving north/south traffic lanes on 4th Street and in the Gore median Stop signs and Cross Traffic Does Not Stop signs. City Engineer Joe Painter said the process would begin immediately, if the council approves the action today.

In another familiar item, the council will be acting on a recommendation from city staff to reject action that would revoke a permit issued to U.S. Cellular for a small cell wireless facility installed at 6432 NW Arrowhead Drive.

That site, approved in June 2023, is one of 26 sites approved by the City Council in four separate actions to allow the cell phone provider to install cell phone towers on city easements as long as they confirm to specific criteria set by a city code enacted by the council in late 2021.

In this instance, a resident is asking that the tower erected at 6432 Arrowhead Drive be relocated to a park down the street from the residence. City inspectors have said the tower is not exactly where the permit specified the tower should be located (it is 1 foot west and 1.5 feet north of what was approved in the plans) but “These dimensions differences are minor in staff’s opinion.” That is why city staff is recommending the request for revocation be denied.

According to city administrators, U.S. Cellular officials said moving the tower’s location would not allow the company to “effectively offload the traffic from existing cell sites in our network,” because each Lawton site was selected for optimal work. Moving the site to either Great Plains or Crosby parks would not work because they “are not near the concentration of users that we are targeting in this location.”

The site is the second one formally challenged by home owners who are unhappy with small cell phone towers that U.S. Cellular has been placing in neighborhoods to optimize their coverage areas. Last month, the council delayed a decision on a tower site at 7990 Micklegate Boulevard, where that homeowner also is arguing the site was not placed according to plans and conflicts with her property.