Expressway builders win reprieve from state
Legislators won't dismantle the agency overseeing the Selmon Expressway during a special session next week.
By JEAN HELLER
Published December 10, 2004
TAMPA - The agency that created the elevated lanes of the Lee Roy Selmon Crosstown Expressway and was threatened with extinction because of the road's problems won a reprieve Thursday.
Senate President Tom Lee, R-Brandon, said in an interview that the Legislature would not move during its special session next week to put the Tampa-Hillsborough Expressway Authority out of business, a possibility he raised in October.
Lee, who was critical at the time of the authority's progress in getting the Selmon Expressway's problems analyzed and repaired, suggested the Legislature might repeal the statute that created the authority and give the Crosstown project to Florida's Turnpike Enterprise to complete.
"That's not going to come up in the special session," Lee said Thursday. "Why not give them a chance to be right?"
Lee said substantial progress had been made on plans to repair the 6-mile long bridge since the firing Oct. 25 of Pat McCue, the expressway authority's executive director. McCue was replaced last month by veteran highway engineering troubleshooter Ralph Mervine, who serves as the authority's interim director.
"They're in a different posture today," Lee said. "It's looking pretty good, actually. My argument has been, hey, what's different about letting them build the project out, as long as you all have confidence in their engineering. McCue, God bless him, was so in denial. They've made more progress in the last month than they made in the first six months of pointing fingers."
Lee referred to the months following the April collapse of a support column beneath the bridge. The column abruptly sank 11 feet into soft soil beneath it, destroying two segments of road above. Problems with a second column in July prompted the authority to halt all work on the bridge until all the supports could be retested.
Preliminary results indicate that as many as 105 of the 218 total bridge support need substantial repairs and another 60 less intensive work. A soils consultant has told the authority it expects to find that only about 20 percent of the columns rest in soil and rock substantial enough to support the load of the three-lane road and the heavy traffic it will bear.
Repair costs have been estimated at close to $80-million.
Jose Abreu, secretary of the Florida Department of Transportation, said in a letter to Mervine earlier this week that he, too, thought the authority should be given a chance to finish the Crosstown project, originally budgeted at $350-million, "provided a clear set of benchmarks are established and met on both the engineering solution and finance plan."
While Lee indicated the engineering plan is solid, Abreu said that financing questions remain, including how the authority will repay to FDOT the $150-million advanced to get the bridge project started. Of those funds, $110-million came from the Transportation Trust fund and was scheduled to be repaid in 2005.
Mervine said Thursday he was gratified by the reprieve granted to the Expressway Authority.
"We're very encouraged by the reports we're getting from Tallahassee on the response up there to our engineering plan," he said. "We're continuing to work with FDOT to finalize all our plans, including the finances."
Some work on the bridge will resume as early as this month, Mervine has said, though the bridge, originally scheduled to open next summer, won't be ready until some time in 2006.
The reversible-lane road was designed to improve commuting between Brandon and Tampa, carrying three lanes of traffic westbound in the morning and eastbound at night.