City, ODOT installing new lights along dark stretch of Broken Arrow Expressway

There's a stretch of the Broken Arrow Expressway that ODOT said has never had lights along it, but that's about to change.

About 60 new light poles are going up along the Broken Arrow Expressway between I-44 and Highway 169.

Some have light heads and others are still on standby, while drivers eagerly wait for the light.

“When you’re driving, and everything is dark around you, it makes it difficult to drive, especially with the people that are on the road,” Tulsa Resident Rob Maves said.

Robert Fries has been driving this section of highway regularly for the last 10 years.

"Whenever I go visit my parents with my kids,” he said. “So we always come back from there, and it's horrible."

He doesn't like driving in the dark, but has figured out a strategy to get by.

"I mainly pay attention more down to lines, and I pay attention to the side. I zone down more to lines, and I kind of have to focus on that rather than look up, because I usually try to focus 3 or 4 car lengths ahead. It's kind of hard without the lights,” Fries said.

"Especially in our urban areas, it definitely is unusual to have a stretch that has no lighting whatsoever,” ODOT Spokesperson TJ Gerlach said.

He said after the major reconstruction of this part of the highway in 2003, conduits were put in for lighting, but no poles were installed.

"This section of highway, whenever it was built, we never actually installed the lighting,” Gerlach said. “We're not really sure why that is. It's been so long since that was done. But we're going back and doing that now, in partnership with the city."

More than 20 years later, drivers should expect a clearer view of what's in front of them.

The City of Tulsa will add LED lights to the new poles and ODOT said they should be on sometime this fall.

The City of Tulsa said it is working to improve lighting downtown, on the Arkansas River bridge, too. The city said that project will begin in November.