Be ready to hit the brakes on southbound Howard Frankland as new signs go up.
By JEAN HELLER
Published August 21, 2004
TAMPA - Those rolling roadblocks on the southbound Howard Frankland Bridge will be back starting Sunday night.
State highway officials say motorists should expect delays of as long as 20 minutes as road crews shut down southbound lanes of the busy bridge to keep traffic away from crews and equipment putting up new signs over the roadway on the Pinellas County side.
The new signs will be at three locations: Roosevelt Boulevard, Fourth Street N and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Street N.
The good news is the work will be done during the lightest traffic hours, from 9 p.m. to 6 a.m., Sunday through Wednesday.
The work is needed because the construction on the huge Interstate 275 project in Pinellas is nearing completion, and there will be a number of changes that require the new signs, said John McShaffrey, spokesman for the state Department of Transportation. Some old signs that were removed to make room for construction work also need to be replaced.
At times, the entrance ramp from Ulmerton Road to southbound I-275 also will be closed.
"It's a necessary inconvenience," McShaffrey said. "All the new signs will be on the St. Pete side, but we need to keep traffic well away from the overhead work, so some of the closures will start back on the Tampa side."
Off-duty police officers will drive pace cars to keep traffic down to speeds below the posted limit while work is in progress.
Most of the construction on the $33-million improvement project is done, and everything should be wrapped up by October, McShaffrey said.
"The crews are mostly doing cleanup work now, except on the Ulmerton-MLK interchange," McShaffrey said. "That and the MLK bridge are where most of the remaining work is."
The collapse last spring of the support beams for the bridge from the southbound interstate to King Street N did not delay the overall highway project, McShaffrey said, though it did delay the opening of that bridge.
"The contractor is still within his construction time," he said.
