State to show truck traffic solution idea

BROOKSVILLE -- Brooksville has battled the problem of rock trucks clogging city streets for at least 50 years, since the mines began to expand after World War II.

It has only grown worse over the years, as the mines grew bigger and began to ship more rock on trucks than on trains -- and when the state transformed U.S. 41 and State Road 50 into one-way streets in Brooksville, speeding up the path through the city.

Now Brooksville and the state have some solutions to the problem.

The first is simply the widening of U.S. 41 and the State Road 50 truck bypass, expected to be finished later this summer. This should cut truck traffic on city streets by about half, said Dennis Dix, the county's transportation planning coordinator.

The state will present plans for the second fix to the problem -- shifting U.S. 98 from Ponce de Leon Boulevard to Cobb Road -- at a workshop today at 4:30 p.m. at Parrot Middle School.

The switch, which Mayor Ernie Wever first suggested at a Brooksville City Council meeting more than five years ago, is designed to attack what has long been the main obstacle to closing city roads to trucks: state law guarantees trucks the right to drive on state roads.

U.S. 98, which is a state-maintained road, runs on the same route as State Road 50 east of town. It follows Jefferson Street into town and heads north on Ponce de Leon. The revised route would have U.S. 98 follow the path of the truck route and then go north on Cobb.

Because Ponce de Leon, the main source of truck traffic in the city, would be maintained by the city within its boundaries, Brooksville would have the right to close it to trucks.

Brooksville City Council member Joe Johnston presented it to the county's Metropolitan Planning Organization, which in turn recommended it to the state Department of Transportation.

The DOT, which has long had a contentious relationship with the city, signed off on the concept about two years ago, Wever said.

"I almost fell out of my chair when they agreed to it," Wever said.

But the agency did not commit any funding to the project until December 2001, when it included about $4.5-million for the design of the project and purchase of right-of-way.

The total cost of the project is expected to be about $12.5-million, Dix said, and it will probably not be completed for about eight years. The work is necessary, he said, because Cobb Road does not currently meet the standards for a state or federal highway.

The road will still be two lanes, though it will have wider shoulders, better drainage and enough right-of-way that it can easily be expanded to four lanes.

"We're going through this whole exercise just so we can rename it U.S. 98 and keep trucks out of the city of Brooksville," Dix said.

Once this is done, Dix said, truck traffic should be cut by 80 percent from current levels.

If it is not this effective, he said, the city has one more option that he considers the final step in a three-phase strategy: Brooksville could take over the maintenance of Jefferson Street, so it would no longer be designated as State Road 50A and the city could add it to the list of roads closed to trucks.

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