Tulsa World
By GAVIN OFF World Data Editor
Published: 1/17/2011 2:21 AM
Last Modified: 1/17/2011 5:45 AM
You could hardly call it a state government department: four people with a tiny budget joined to build and oversee something that had never existed in Oklahoma.
But that's exactly how the Oklahoma Department of Transportation - then called the Oklahoma Department of Highways - started 100 years ago.
How times have changed.
The Transportation Department has grown into an agency with more than 150 engineers and an annual budget of nearly a half-billion dollars. It owns 850 miles of railway, oversees 6,800 bridges and maintains 31,000 lane-miles of road.
The department manages rail, highway, river and public transportation - making it nearly impossible for it not to affect the lives of nearly all Oklahomans.
"It's an immense amount of improvement (from a century ago)," said Terri Angier, a spokeswoman for ODOT.
The department's growth in the past 100 years is startling.
It began with just four people - a commissioner, assistant commissioner, engineer and secretary. Today more than 2,400 people are employed by the department... FULL ARTICLE
Posted on
Mon, January 17, 2011
by John Cox