Can work on SR 54 outpace growth?

A widening project should improve the drive. But with traffic lights already planned, officials hope the road won't end up like U.S. 19 or Bruce B. Downs.

By STEPHEN HEGARTY
Published July 4, 2004

	Traffic signals coming to SR54: Click for full graphic
	[Times map]

Pasco County's main east-west road is getting a multimillion-dollar facelift that should leave it wider, smoother and more efficient than ever.

Yet, with each mile of sleek new asphalt, State Road 54 remains in the shadow of the area's most notorious thoroughfares.

Additional traffic signals are in the works on SR 54. New homes and businesses are appearing. Traffic is increasing. That leaves motorists such as Ray Benton of New Port Richey to wonder what SR 54 will look like in a few years.

"They're not widening the road for you and me," said Benton, who travels SR 54 to Gunn Highway to get to Tampa during rush hour. "They're widening it for the future growth, all the new houses that are coming."

That leads Benton to the inevitable question, the question that haunts planners: Is SR 54 going to end up looking like U.S. 19?

County and state traffic experts say with some confidence that, no, SR 54 is not another U.S. 19 in the making. The rules are different. Engineers and planners have learned a few lessons.

But that doesn't mean growth won't outpace planning and good intentions. There is still danger that SR 54 could resemble Dale Mabry Highway, Bruce B. Downs Boulevard or one of the region's other recent-vintage, stop-and-go roads.

"We're trying to keep it from looking like that," said Keith Crawford, assistant district traffic operations engineer for the Florida Department of Transportation. "But there's a lot of vacant land along there and now it's filling up."

No one doubts that the newly widened highway (the last stage of the SR 54 widening should be finished in 2006) will easily fill up with cars as the many developments that hug the highway - such as Long Lake Ranch, Seven Oaks and Trinity - fill in. The question is whether the state and county planners have enough money, ideas and time to keep the cars moving.

It used to be that you could define Pasco County vertically. There was east Pasco - ranch land, citrus groves and the county seat. And there was west Pasco, where most of the people lived, where all the traffic was, and where everything revolved around U.S. 19.

In recent years the county has organized itself horizontally, with SR 54 near the southern rim providing the spine for recent development and growth.

County and state planners are trying to keep SR 54 wide enough and fast enough to keep up with the growth. They lost that battle on U.S. 19 long ago and have been spending millions trying to recover.

"On U.S. 19 the idea was, if you had a parcel we'd put in a cut (in the median) so the cars could get to it," said Sam Steffey, Pasco's growth management administrator. "No turn lanes or anything, just a cut so cars could turn or cut across. That got to be a mess."

When an intersection got busy enough on U.S. 19, they put in traffic signals. Lots of them. U.S. 19 is a 19.7-mile stretch of road in Pasco, and there are 28 traffic signals. That's an average of one signal every three-quarters of a mile. Even that understates the frequency, as up north beyond Hudson traffic signals are few and far between.

SR 54 has been relatively free of traffic signals. A typical section is the part now being widened, the 5-mile stretch between Gunn Highway and Little Road. There are no signals in between.

There will be soon.

The state has considered traffic signals at five intersections in the fast-growing Trinity area. Each intersection is busy and potentially dangerous. If signals were erected at each of those intersections, it would be a stop-and-go mess. The state has decided to erect signals at two of them.

"People demand lights at all these intersections, but you don't want to have too many," said Crawford of the DOT. "It ruins the traffic flow."

Starkey Boulevard will have a signal but not nearby Player Drive. There will be a signal at Duck Slough, not at nearby Country Place, nor at Success Road.

That's good news to Bob Ridings of New Port Richey. He lives in Ellington Estates off SR 54. He has pressured the state and county to put in a new signal at Starkey, the entrance to Longleaf. He got some help from county Commissioner Ann Hildebrand.

At one time the plan was to put in new signals near Trinity as soon as SR 54 was widened from two to six lanes. But, in a familiar turn of events, growth outpaced the road construction schedule.

"Sure, in an ideal world, you put in the light when the road is finished," said Ridings. "There's too much going on around there to wait. The light is needed now."

The new schedule calls for a temporary traffic signal at Starkey in August. The county will take care of that. Then the permanent signal will be built in December, courtesy of the state.

The same dramas are playing out along the other hot spots along SR 54 - Land O'Lakes and Wesley Chapel. Yes, there will be a signal at Oak Grove Boulevard. No, there are no plans for a signal at Livingston Road, nor at Foggy Ridge Parkway, despite requests from homeowners.

"We just can't put lights everywhere people want them," said Crawford.

There is a frustrating irony about traffic-jammed main thoroughfares.

Commercial and residential activity revolve around them. Side streets feed into them. They become the streets everyone wants to avoid, yet they are virtually unavoidable.

"If you live in New Tampa, you can't go to a neighbor's house or go get a loaf of bread without going out on Bruce B. Downs," said Doug Uden, director of the Pasco County Metropolitan Planning Organization. "There's no other way to go."

With that in mind, Pasco planners have sketched out a series of east-west roads designed to take the heat off SR 54.

State Road 56 is the ideal example. As soon as it was built, motorists happily changed their driving patterns and avoided sections of SR 54 altogether. That road will be extended farther. It's the same strategy with the Chancey Road extension. The county has an entire road network planned for central Pasco, and the whole idea is to take cars off State Roads 54 and 52.

Often the plans meet with public resistance.

The redesign of Lake Patience Road in Land O'Lakes worried neighbors who thought the widened and reconfigured road would ruin the quiet neighborhood ambience. There is similar opposition to plans to extend Overpass Road east from Interstate 75 to Handcart Road.

And the 8-mile Ridge Road extension, designed to take traffic off State Roads 52 and 54, has faced lawsuits from environmentalists. Folks whose homes lie in the path of the proposed Chancey Road extension also have expressed strong opposition.

Another, less grandiose, strategy also meets with resistance.

Planners want to see more housing developments connected with each other via a network of smaller back roads, so that a five-minute trip to a neighbor's house doesn't involve driving on SR 54. In the past, developers balked.

"For a while there every developer was building a gated community," said Steffey, the growth management administrator. "They want to be their own little entity. That goes against the idea of connecting your road with another community."

When possible, the county is now requiring that developers provide those connecting roads.

"These are the sorts of things we're going to have to do," said Uden of the Metropolitan Planning Organization. "State roads are supposed to be for high speed, longer distance trips. Not just to go to a friend's house. There have to be other alternatives or we're going to run into the same old problems."

Said Uden: "We use the analogy all the time: "Hey, this is going to look like 19 if we don't do something now."'

[Last modified July 4, 2004, 01:00:39]