Brandon

Turn lane a critical issue for patients

A new, solid median in Lakewood Drive concerns an assisted living facility.

By SHANNON COLAVECCHIO-VAN SICKLER
© St. Petersburg Times
published March 21, 2003

BRANDON -- Chuck Hoskinson of Valrico moved his 86-year-old mother, Catherine, here from Kentucky two years ago because she was getting frail.

She had had a knee replacement in 1996, and had taken a bad fall in 1999, so Hoskinson settled her into the Delaney Creek Lodge, an assisted living facility, where he assumed the emergency care would always be prompt.

But a median recently installed in Lakewood Drive in front of the 77-resident facility could cost ambulances and fire trucks precious minutes, said Delaney director Cyndi Nelson. Because the median has no break to allow a turn into Delaney, northbound vehicles will have to drive up to Oakfield or State Road 60 and make a U-turn to enter the facility, which is on the west side of Lakewood.

"Make a U-turn off Oakfield or (SR) 60 with a fire truck?" Nelson said. "Come on! I don't see that happening, especially not at rush hour."

Fire-rescue officials are inquiring about the possibility of rebuilding the median to include a turn into Delaney.

The Tampa-Hillsborough Expressway Authority installed the median when it expanded Lakewood from two lanes to four. Lakewood leads to the $350-million Brandon Parkway, an elevated express highway that will connect commuters to downtown Tampa via six lanes running above the Lee Roy Selmon Crosstown Expressway.

This summer, a new fire station on Providence Road will serve Delaney and the Lakewood area. Those trucks will be coming from the south and will have to make a U-turn, said Hillsborough County Fire Rescue spokesman Ray Yeakley. That could take a while, given how much traffic clogs SR 60 and Oakfield.

"How am I going to explain to a grieving family, 'Well, instead of five minutes, it took them 15?"' Nelson said.

Yeakley said there's nothing that requires the expressway authority to include a median cut for fire truck access, but "an assisted living facility is definitely something we should have easy access to. It would be very difficult for one of our trucks to make a U-turn."

Communications director PerryDawn Brown said the median was planned for three years, and Delaney representatives were invited to a series of public meetings but did not attend.

"There was never a plan for a curb cut" because traffic studies showed it would be safest to make a U-turn at Oakfield, Brown said Wednesday.

Hoskinson, meanwhile, has contacted the County Commission.

"People like me need to know that, in case of an emergency, our loved ones will get prompt service," he said. "That just doesn't seem to have been taken into the equation when they (the authority) planned this. These folks are fragile, and I am very concerned that my mother have fast medical care. She's fallen before, and she's a real fragile lady."