TBO.com - TBO is Tampa Bay Online

By The By(pass): I-275 Getting Fixed

ADVERTISEMENT

By William Scruggs / The Tampa Tribune

Published: December 8, 2007

I know you can't see me, but I'm doing my happy dance now.

It's a neat little step and hop, with a couple of shakes and a slide. Good news always brings out my happy dance: the day I graduated from high school, the birth of my children, the day my children graduated from high school, to name a few. I do the dance especially well after a shower in front of a mirror still adequately steamed. Dignity requires some modesty.

But still, I do my happy dance now because we are finally getting an upgrade on my side of Interstate 275.

This is long overdue, and should have started well before some of the other expansion projects on and around I-275. I never understood why the crawl-hour gridlock between Himes Avenue and the river did not get the same attention as the I-4 exchange.

In any event, the quagmire of south 275 will soon be gone. We who travel the road regularly have been patiently waiting for this. We've waited while the road running near the big-name casino/restaurant on I-4 got the improvement along with the in-the-wrong-place outdoor music venue. Patiently, I say, we waited while the improvements to make-believe-world and Central Florida made travel easier and less congested.

We said, "Go ahead, build - yet again - a new toll road to shuffle our shoppers to a new mall and remodel the roads around the airport and another new mall." "Build north," we said, so that the deserters of the south would feel better about their abandonment, those who have left south Tampa for Lutz and gave respectability to Land O Lakes, those who still say they are from Tampa when asked by out-of-staters. And still we waited as Carrollwood and New Tampa and Wesley Chapel have been blessed with new and improved roadways.

Patience has made us a sturdy community.

I know this is not good news for everybody. The homeowners along the way will surely feel the pain. The road warriors will need to make adjustments to travel plans. Eventually the road to improvement will mean more discombobulation for awhile.

But this is the right thing to do, however late. I am thankful this is not Houston, where road improvement means stacking bridges five high over each other, where something like exiting onto Dale Mabry Highway would require you to start on the other side of the bay. A little excessive to me, but that's Texas, where everything is excessive.

I know progress is a burden. And it often spreads like the plague. Any time a government body talks about development or redevelopment or improvements or whatever the catch phrase, people are displaced, the environment takes a hit, homes and communities destroyed. Lives are interrupted for the sake of progress.

However, when I told my 20-something daughter about the expansion, she said, "Where?" And that's when it occurred to me: There have always been road changes and improvements and redevelopment in her lifetime. What is inconsequential to her generation is an inconvenience to mine and nothing more to her than the same old, same old.

William Scruggs is a Tampa resident.

Share this:

Loading Comments...

Email Print

ADVERTISEMENT