This is assuming the Gilcrease Expressway Loop carries the east-west highway traffic, what about north-south on Hwy 75? I think you have to keep the east leg of the IDL in place and if anything bury that section of highway similar to the south leg.
In either scenario I think removing the north leg of IDL would be the most doable and highest priority
244 is definitely the priority given it's impact to surrounding neighborhoods and that it's almost all elevated where you can do nothing to it like a park cap or development cap.
This is assuming the Gilcrease is fully complete on the NW portion too, then you'd designate that route from around the airport to out toward Sand Springs as I-244 and eventually whatever the new east-west Interstate will be called between NWA and I-35. The idea is that with the transportation bill not only could you get funding from the Reconnecting Communities program to decommission 244 through downtown you could likely have a really good chance to get funding to complete the NW part of the loop to interstate standard too. All of the regional east west traffic would be absorbed by either taking the north route of taking the SW part of the Gilcrease that's almost finished that hooks into I-44 and then taking it to 412 to continue east or vis versa. Taking either of those routes only adds a couple miles to a drive which is a pretty minor thing compared to what we'd gain back in redevelopable land in the urban core.
Highway 75 doesn't carry as much traffic as you think through downtown. It carries less cars per day than Riverside, 71st, Yale, Memorial, etc. so the question is do we really need the East leg either? Same with the Tisdale. Think about the redevelopment potential in the Home Depot site if 75 was brought down to a boulevard and you gained back 100-200 feet of land to the east of the site. Same thing with the land between Nordam and Pearl and East Village and Pearl. If Madison was rebuilt to at least 2 lanes each north and south similar to say Riverside or Peoria in Brookside it'd be able to handle every car that uses that portion of the IDL now, they'd just be driving 35-40 mph versus 55-60 mph and have to stop at a couple stop lights most likely. Think about how much easier it would be to redevelop the Evans site too with 75 being a boulevard versus the nightmare it is now that pretty much makes ingress and egress to that site ridiculously complicated.
The same goes for Highway 75 too, if say someone was driving from Bartlesville to I-40 as soon as they get to the Gilcrease they can take it around the west side of town and hook back into 75 at I-44 and continue south. It would add a couple miles to their trip and they'd have to pay a toll, but for what we'd gain back to me is worth it. Once the Gilcrease is complete, it makes the IDL relatively obsolete in needing to be there for multiple sections of it.
INCOG traffic count map link:
https://incog.maps.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/index.html?id=8f4d62c5aecc4629a019f9cbe0076b89#'s are cars per day:
244 @ Peoria: 65,100
244 @ Detroit: 73,797
412 @ Quanah (just west of the Tisdale): 56,787
Hwy 75 @ 11th: 24,421
Hwy 75 @ 6th: 26,342
Hwy 75 @ Archer: 38,089
Tisdale @ Edison (just north): 23,995
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City streets for reference:
Peoria @ 41st: 19,630-19,980
Riverside @ 31st: 20,604-20,958
Yale @ 21st: 20,883-24,420
Cherry Street @ Utica: 14,242-15,623 (Keep in mind this is 1 lane each way and it doesn't have a problem carrying 15,000 cars per day)
Just about every north/south road in Tulsa carries around 20k cars per day at various areas south of 11th Street, here's a few of the busier areas:
Riverside @ 71st: 33,020
Riverside @ Creek Turnpike: 36,125
71st @ Mingo: 33,978-34,713
71st @ Elwood: 30,782
Yale @ 51st: 28,968 - 30,866
Yale @ 71st: 25,187-26,740
Sheridan @ 51st: 26,073-28,392
Sheridan @ 61st: 24,508-25,254
Memorial @ 51st: 31,992-32,960
Memorial @ Creek Turnpike: 51,249 (this street carries 2x as many cars as either the east or the west leg of the IDL)
With Memorial, even though people complain of the traffic here, you can't discount how valuable the traffic counts are to retailers & businesses in this area and how that has fostered economic growth on Memorial between the Creek and 121st - now imagine blowing through this area and widening Memorial to freeway standards and bulldozing businesses up and down the corridor. I don't think anyone would go for that, but that's what we did to downtown on an even bigger scale. 20,000-50,000 cars per day on a city street is 10x more valuable than the same amount of cars driving by on a highway. If you converted Memorial to a freeway that entire commercial area would die because 75% of the traffic that used to drive by at slower speeds now blow past the area at 65mp and you'd just see new development pop up further south. At the end of the day what is the benefit of that? To save someone 5 minutes in traffic? But in 10 years when you have 50k new people living further south, that freeway will be bumper to bumper too and you'll end up spending more time in traffic driving even further away. Induced demand does not get nearly the amount of attention it deserves and we'd be able to build better cities if we started considering that in our transportation planning.
To the accessibility point, there's 31,159 cars per day that use the Creek Turnpike @ Aspen by Warren. That development struggled for years to convince retailers to move there because the traffic counts didn't support development (among a few other reasons too) yet 71st near Mingo along with other commercial areas that have built up have similar traffic counts. There's a huge difference when we're talking access and visibility to businesses. Traffic is actually a good thing to have and where and how that traffic has the potential to access your site is important too.
Say 100% of the cars that use 75 today took an expanded Madison, you'd instantly be able to market all that land that was given back from the old Hwy 75 right of way to retailers. You're talking about changing the game in trying to court retailers to downtown by changing the access from highways to city streets and drastically improving visibility too. A retailer can overlook rooftops if there is a road where they make up for a lack of rooftops from high traffic counts that can immediately access their property or you need enough rooftops in an area to convince retailers to locate somewhere that might not have decent traffic counts because there hasn't been commercial space built up yet.
Right now downtown has that exact issue, why would someone like an Urban Outfitters go downtown when they could locate along Peoria with more rooftops and direct frontage on a street with around 20k cars per day. They looked at several sites downtown years ago but that was the issue, eventhough the IDL like the north part that goes by the Arts District has 70k per day drive by that's irrelevant to businesses, they'd rather have the 20k cars per day going past on a direct frontage. The Evan's site and others would become 10x more valuable having 30k cars per day driving by on Lansing/Madison versus them being funneled on 75 with extremely limited ways to access the site/downtown.