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Hearing To Air Road Building Priority List

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By KEVIN WIATROWSKI

The Tampa Tribune

Published: June 12, 2008

WESLEY CHAPEL - Central Pasco's home-building boom may have ended for the moment, but the road-building boom is only beginning.
Wesley Chapel road projects dominate the latest list of highway construction scheduled to kick off between this fall and early 2013. The project roster will go before a public hearing at 10 a.m. today when the Metropolitan Planning Organization, the county's transportation planning agency, meets at the historical Pasco County Courthouse in Dade City.
MPO director Doug Uden said the list ensures that a given project will get state or county funds during the five-year window for anything from preliminary engineering to construction. Most of the road projects take several years to go from start to finish.

"This is showing that the money's there, so go ahead and get going," Uden said.

Although central Pasco dominates the list of two dozen projects, west Pasco's U.S. 19 corridor remains the county's highest-priority road project.

"It stays at the top of the list because it needs to be front and center," said county Commissioner Ann Hildebrand.

Three years ago, the county and state began planning for a continuous right-turn lane running for 20 miles from Pinellas County to Hernando County.
Highway officials see the turn lane, combined with reducing the number of median cuts, as a way to make the chronically congested highway more efficient. The project list up for review today has $25.4 million in federal funds earmarked for the first wave of turn lanes starting in 2010.

About $16.2 million in federal money is available to buy land for the next phase of turn lanes starting in 2011.

FDOT engineers are currently designing the turn lane, Uden said.

Hildebrand lives off U.S. 19 and has led efforts to improve safety and traffic flow on the congested highway. She expressed her frustration at the pace of work on the right-turn project.

"While it stays at the top of the priority list, I don't see the asphalt going down any time soon," she said.

Some of the projects on the list - the widening of County Road 54 in Wesley Chapel, for example - are finished or largely done but remain on the list because the state owes the builders an incentive payment for finishing early, Uden said.

Also on the project list are:

• $50.4 million for replacing the bridges that carry Interstate 75 over C.R. 54 in Wesley Chapel. That project is scheduled to start early in 2009.

• $18.4 million to rehabilitate the rest stops on I-75 just north of State Road 56, also in Wesley Chapel and also to begin next year.

• $38 million to widen Ridge Road to four lanes between Little and Moon Lake roads. Construction is to begin in 2009 or 2010.

HIGHWAY PROJECT PRIORITIES

• Creating U.S. 19 continuous right-turn lane from Pinellas County to Hernando County.

• Buying right of way for widening State Road 52 between Interstate 75 and the Suncoast Parkway.

• Four-laning County Road 54 between Oakley and Bruce B. Downs boulevards.

• Six-laning State Road 54 between Bruce B. Downs Boulevard and Curley Road.

• Four-laning C.R. 54 between Magnolia Boulevard and Oakley Boulevard (done).

• Six-laning S.R. 52 between Moon Lake Road and the Suncoast Parkway (done).

• Installing computer-controlled signals and message boards on U.S. 19.

• Constructing interchange at Suncoast Parkway and planned Ridge Road Extension.

• Six-laning I-75 between Interstate 275 and S.R. 56.

• Six-laning U.S. 41 between Tower Road and the planned Ridge Road Extension.

Source: Pasco County Metropolitan Planning Organization

Although U.S. 19 leads the pack, central Pasco work dominates the county's top 10 highway projects scheduled between 2008 and 2013. The list includes: Reporter Kevin Wiatrowski can be reached at (813) 948-4201 or kwiatrowski@tampatrib.com. Although U.S. 1

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