Oklahoma approves contract for wider Roosevelt Bridge over Lake Texoma

Oklahoma transportation commissioners approved a contract of about $408 million to design and build a wider replacement for the Roosevelt Bridge, which carries US-70 across Lake Texoma. The Oklahoma Department of Transportation announced the award April 7. The project team plans to keep the old bridge open to traffic while crews build the new one just to its south, according to the official project website.

The new span will carry two lanes each way, with shoulders, over the lake at the line between Bryan and Marshall counties, the website says. The team plans to remove the old bridge once traffic moves to the new one. In the meantime, drivers may meet work zones, lane shifts and lower speeds, according to the website.

The website reports that crews are surveying, inspecting and testing soil. It says major bridge construction is expected in fall 2026, once design and permitting are done. The projected schedule would open two lanes of the new bridge in fall 2028. Four-lane traffic and the end of all construction would follow in fall 2029, which ODOT gives as an anticipated finish.

The current bridge opened in 1945 and carries about 8,500 vehicles a day, according to ODOT. An agency benefit-cost study describes a two-lane deck with no shoulders. ODOT's federal grant analysis counted 58 crashes on the corridor from 2016 through 2020, and four of them were fatal. By the agency's math, the corridor's fatal-crash rate in those years ran more than twice the statewide rate.

ODOT says it wants a safer, more dependable crossing that ties the region together better. The plans call for full shoulders and lighting, plus work on the US-70 approaches. The agency's cost model found that a bridge closure would roughly double the length of a drive between Kingston and Durant.

In July 2024, ODOT announced a federal bridge grant for the project and reported that House Bill 2915 authorized state bonds for the work. According to the department's 2024 annual report, that federal money and bonding authority moved the planned construction start up three years, from 2029 to 2026.

The contract is ODOT's first under modified progressive design-build. Under that method, designers and the contractor work alongside department staff through design and construction planning. The April commission packet shows the selected team's total was the lowest of the three teams that competed.

An earlier Lake Texoma bridge contract was far smaller. In November 2018, commissioners awarded $43 million to replace the Willis Bridge, which carries US-377/SH-99 over the lake between Marshall County and Grayson County, Texas. ODOT specified that replacement with two traffic lanes and shoulders, and it expected Texas to pay about half the cost.

The Roosevelt crossing also needed emergency work in 2025. That June, commissioners approved a separate emergency contract after storms and flooding badly damaged the bridge's causeway. ODOT said the bridge itself was not damaged.