I-275 will close ... uh, sometime

Confusion over the word ''midnight'' and a supervisor's injury delay construction in St. Petersburg.

By JEAN HELLER, Times Staff Writer
© St. Petersburg Times
published March 14, 2002

ST. PETERSBURG -- Motorists may be excused if they are confused over signs announcing temporary closings of southbound Interstate 275. State officials and the contractor working on the road have been pretty perplexed themselves.

This is the bottom line, at least for today: No closures are scheduled yet on I-275 in St. Petersburg. None. Despite the electronic messages flashing closure alerts for two weeks, the southbound lanes will not be closed this week.

Maybe not next week, either.

This is how the confusion has progressed.

Flashing signs first warned motorists that southbound lanes between 22nd Avenue N and Fifth Avenue N would be closed from midnight to 4 a.m. on March 13, which was Wednesday.

Oops, no, that turned out to be wrong. The Florida Department of Transportation said the road actually would be closed beginning at midnight on Thursday, the 14th, which is today.

The signs used the wrong date because the contractor assigned the hour of midnight to the night before. Then, Wednesday morning, the signs suddenly said the road closures would run from 11 p.m. to 4 a.m. beginning March 17, which is Sunday.

Well, no, that's not right either, said FDOT spokesman John McShaffrey.

"Our engineer in the field has instructed the contractor to turn off the signs. At this point, we don't know what night we're going to start the work," McShaffrey said Wednesday.

"The delay was caused by an injury to the manager of the project, and the contractor didn't feel comfortable proceeding without him," McShaffrey said. "He's expected to be off for a week or so."

At some point the highway will be closed for five overnight hours over three days to accommodate equipment erecting new exit signs.

And why was the start time moved back from midnight to 11 p.m.?

"So nobody would be confused as to what day we're talking about," McShaffrey said.

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