Driving to Brandon in the not-so-fast lane

Column

As I turned onto Plant Avenue after another long day of pursuing truth, justice and the American Way here at Tampa's favorite newspaper, life was good. Gridlock from the Platt Street bridge project was gone and it was going to be smooth sailing from downtown Tampa all the way to the beautiful oasis of Brandon.

Just take a right here on the entrance ramp to the Lee Roy Selmon Expressway and … oh dear. I could see cars. I could see brake lights. After easing onto the road, I could see a flashing light that warned a lane was closed.

It was again time to play the favorite game for east Hillsborough County commuters: What are they doing to the Selmon now? And when will it be over?

This time it was a relatively minor bit of work dubbed "Downtown Viaduct Widening and Deck Replacement Construction."

Right after you clear that, though, you start dodging work on the I-4/Selmon Connector Project. That's not so minor.

That's when it hit me: I wonder if there has ever been a time when orange barrels weren't present on this 14-mile road.

"No," Tampa Mayor Bob Buckhorn said with a laugh Friday afternoon after a news conference to tout the glory of the road that eventually will connect I-4 and the Selmon. It is a big deal. U.S. Transportation Dept. Secretary Ray LaHood and U.S. Rep. Kathy Castor joined Buckhorn to talk up the $105 million project, paid for largely with stimulus dollars.

Buckhorn said once the work is finished, trucks loaded with stuff from the Port of Tampa will be able to drive all the way to Maine without hitting a traffic light. He said they hit five lights now, which must slow that express ride to the northeast by at least several minutes.

I'm no contrarian, though (sort of). Roads have to be built and maintained, especially when you grow like this place did.

When I moved to Brandon in the late 1980s, it was basically out in the country.

Now there are lots of cars.

Lots, and lots, and lots of cars. Brandonites depend on the Selmon to get them downtown and to MacDill, so builders keep paving and upgrading and slowing things down in the name of speeding it up.

Between the joy of the reversible lane project and the greater joy when the lane fell down and went boom, the demolition of toll booths, the lane closures and all those signs with squiggly lines signaling lane changes, calling this an "expressway" had to be a bureaucrat's idea of a cruel joke.

"But you have to admit, once you clear the construction on there you can really go," expressway authority executive director Joseph Waggoner said, and it's true.

On the drive home at night, it's kind of fun to look down from the elevated lane as in-bound drivers are forced over into a single line and off the road, then back on, as part of the connector project.

You just have to get to the elevated lanes first.

With that in mind, I asked the extremely affable Waggoner if our favorite road will ever be free of orange barrels. He said maybe after 2013, "we should be OK."

I said I'd hold him to that. What I didn't say was, I won't hold my breath.