Directions Traditionally, the primary focus of transportation planning in the Oklahoma City metropolitan area has been on building streets and highways. As traffic volumes have increased new roads have been built or additional lanes have been constructed to reduce traffic congestion. However, building new streets has become a spiraling function as new capacity has been added, additional traffic has been generated to occupy the added capacity thereby causing a need for still more capacity. In addition to the increasing expense of continuous road construction, environmental concerns are an ever more important consideration in transportation planning. A transportation system which relies less on the automobile is becoming a necessity as the Environmental Protection Agency's air quality standards become more stringent.
Attainment designation refers to the levels of six criteria pollutants in the air.
Losing this designation will create a need to develop and implement a mitigation plan which may include costly and inconvenient mitigation measures. Pursuit of several actions in this section will help preserve air quality. One key feature of a balanced transportation system is transit services. Metro Transit is pursuing the expansion of its services by increasing the frequency and convenience of bus services along major transit corridors. The following map shows potential regional mobility corridors where bus services should be expanded in the short-term Later rail service could be established along one or more of these corridors.