A Houston billboard asked me to leave Texas for Oklahoma. No thanks. Oklahoma wants to be the new Texas, and the state has invested heavily in trying to entice Texans to move north. By Gwen Howerton, Texas Culture ReporterNov 25, 2025 View of downtown Tulsa, Oklahoma, set against a clear blue sky during a sunny day. Catherine Falls Commercial/Getty Images Cruising down I-45 through the Woodlands, headed back to Houston from a weekend spent with my girlfriend's family, I was offered a new path in life. "You've spent 47 hours in traffic this year. MOVE TO OKLAHOMA," a digital billboard blared briefly before switching to show an ad for a personal injury lawyer. The traffic was obnoxious, sure, and it was moving slowly enough that I got a good look at the billboard. But it wasn't moving so slow that I could whip my phone out to get a photo, and it certainly wasn't moving slow enough to make me consider turning the car around, driving back up I-45, getting on I-35 in Dallas, and then driving to Oklahoma City and never looking back. A cursory internet search told me that I wasn't the only one being asked to move to the Sooner State because of my commute times. Finding the specific brand of billboard I saw took a few minutes. But then I found other Texas drivers who, like me, were confused. "I saw a billboard on 75 in DALLAS that said 'Cut your commute by 21.4 minutes; MOVE TO OKLAHOMA,' it doesn’t exactly work like that," a user wrote on Threads last year. "Well played, Oklahoma. I don't think it'll work, but well played," writer Mitch Tidwell wrote on X about a billboard he saw in Fort Worth. Then I found it: A post from Oklahoma Lt. Governor Matt Pinnell, who posted a photo to X in October of a billboard in Dallas. "If you lived in Oklahoma, you'd be home by now," the ad reads. "#BeatTexas, but come live the good life in Oklahoma," Pinnell wrote. (The post was a reference to the Red River Rivalry game last month.) So this is a project of the government of Oklahoma, but still, I was bewildered. Is traffic really so bad that people would consider living in Oklahoma? Do they have a world-class public transit system in Oklahoma, and I just didn't know about it? (No). As it turns out, Oklahoma really wants people to move there, and billboards are just the first step. The signs, placed strategically off of Texas highways, are part of the state's broader "Move to Oklahoma" campaign, spearheaded by Pinnell and the Oklahoma Department of Commerce. In 2023, Pinnell wrote in an op-ed for the department's website that, spurred by the Red River Rivalry, Oklahoma was going to target workers in the Dallas-Fort Worth area to convince them to move north. "When it came to jobs and opportunities, Dallas used to have us beat. But over the past 20 years or so, I’ve watched Oklahoma transform into a hub for innovation and growth―a modern frontier," Pinnell wrote at the time, rattling off statistics about Oklahoma City's growth and the state's roaring economy. "My point is this: As a state, we have a lot to offer. One thing we certainly need now is more workforce. That 2023 op-ed leans heavily on commute times, claiming that "Dallas drivers have one of the most grueling commutes in the country," while in Oklahoma, "we enjoy the ninth-shortest average one-way commute time compared to the other states." Hence the "If you lived in Oklahoma, you'd be home by now" billboard. Wow, when you put it that way, maybe I should move after all. So Pinnell's op-ed explains the billboards, and I suppose that they expanded them to Houston. (A spokesperson for Oklahoma's Department of Commerce gave me an out-of-office notice. Hopefully, he's vacationing somewhere nicer than Oklahoma.) And clicking around on the Oklahoma Department of Commerce's website, I learned all about the "Move to Oklahoma" campaign. According to that website, my cost of living would be 13.5 percent lower if I moved from Houston to Oklahoma City. That includes transportation, groceries and housing. But does that account for, you know, having to live in Oklahoma? And apparently, billboards and savvy websites with price comparison tools aren't the only trick up Oklahoma's sleeve. Pinnell told the New York Times in 2023 that, inspired by the influx of big companies to Texas post-COVID, Oklahoma wanted a piece of the pie. Tulsa was almost able to lure a Tesla factory to the city in 2020, though Elon Musk evidently chose Austin. Imagine if all of the anti-woke tech bros moved to Tulsa instead. "We hope it's the next Texas," Pinnell told the Times, citing a rash of policies passed by the Oklahoma legislature designed to slash regulation and corporate taxes to entice companies to the state. Various Oklahoma cities have also tried to lure workers from both Texas and other parts of the country. Tulsa offers a $10,000 grant for remote workers to move to the city for at least a year, and Oklahoma City has built more amenities such as parks and downtown streetcars. Per the Times, more than 100 companies had moved to Oklahoma as a result of the state's initiatives, and 950 people took Tulsa's $10,000 offer. Oklahoma City is growing like crazy, too. Gambling is legal there, and they have a better medical mar1juana program than Texas'. So that's why billboards on Texas highways are begging you to move to Oklahoma to lower your commute time. I'll admit, it's a cute offer. But I'd rather be dead and stuck in traffic in Houston than alive in Oklahoma. So thanks, but no thanks.
