Tulsa Road Widening Project Delays Blamed On Utility Company

A $14 million dollar road widening project was delayed, according to the City of Tulsa, by a utility company that wouldn’t move their lines and at several points wouldn’t communicate about the holdup.

The City took the unusual action of naming Windstream as the main cause of delays during the widening of 81st Street. The one mile project was originally estimated to take around 16 months, but was delayed at several points by utilities that were in the way, especially on the East end of the project around Haikey Creek.

The complex project involved building new larger culverts and substantially raising the road there, but the design had to be changed and construction was delayed by fiber optics lines in the path.

“We're looking forward to not having Windstream on any other project but there wasn't a way to design around it in this case,” said Paul Zachary, the City of Tulsa engineer who oversees all projects.

Zachary briefed the City Council on the project explaining why an extra 300 days was being added to the contract terms. Zachary said the changes clarify that the construction contractor Becco wasn’t responsible for the delay, but “crews were demobilized and sent to other projects while we waited for the utilities to relocate,” he said.

The project is substantially complete, with two lanes blocked for the entire mile. It should be completed within another month, according to a City spokesperson.

Windstream spokesperson Scott Morris said the company "had three separate jobs to complete that were associated with the 81st Street project, and all three jobs were completed by April 2022. This was a complex project involving coordination among multiple parties with separate work schedules, and at various times Windstream was held up while others completed their portions. We did experience a communication lapse at one point, but when the City of Tulsa made our senior staff aware of that, we reached out, apologized, and provided City officials with a direct contact. Unfortunately, this project took longer than we would have liked, but, again, our part of it was completed in April 2022.”

Zachary said the issues have been resolved now, but he couldn’t recall a longer delay related to single issue like this, and said at one point the City considered intentionally cutting through their lines to get the project moving.

“Windstream has been a major issue, while they were in bankruptcy, we'd get someone out there working and they'd get called off and we just couldn't get responses,” he said. “We had a hard time getting people to even answer the phone.”