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By JAMES THORNER, Times Staff WriterMonths after the deadline, residents are still waiting for the widening of County Line to ease traffic problems.
MEADOW POINTE - After 8 a.m. the cars start playing bumper tag on County Line Road. On some days the traffic jam stretches 11/2 miles.
Fawn Nieuwenhoff is among the parents who refuse to spend 15 to 20 minutes stuck in gridlock. It's only one mile from her Meadow Pointe house to Sand Pine Elementary School.
So she ditched the car keys and now walks her two kids to school. The kids sail along the sidewalks on scooters, outdistancing the frustrated commuters behind the wheels of their cars.
Who would have known, seven years after Sand Pine opened, Meadow Pointe residents would still be mired in traffic on two-lane County Line Road?
Workers are widening County Line to four lanes, but progress on the $2.5-million project has been bumpy.
The contractor, APAC-Southeast Inc., missed its July 28 completion deadline. Early September was to be the new grand opening date, and that's come and gone.
The new projected completion date? Thanksgiving. At least that's what the contractor and county engineers are telling Meadow Pointe residents."Nobody's holding their breath for November," said Wayne Busbice, who sits on one of the neighborhood's supervisory boards.
APAC officials couldn't be reached for comment, but Jim Widman, Pasco County's chief engineer, said the company blames employee and equipment shortages.
APAC is one of the country's biggest road contractors, and Widman suspects it's spread too thinly doing work for both the county and the state Department of Transportation.
After July's missed deadline, the county began fining APAC $500 a day, a penalty Widman expects the company to appeal."Everybody out there ought to be upset," Widman said of Wesley Chapel residents. "We are doing everything we can to coax the contractor."
Complicating the 1.4-mile widening project is traffic, mostly dump trucks, streaming from a middle school and high school construction site north of Mansfield Boulevard.
Pressed by Meadow Pointe leaders last year, Pasco County commissioners barred school construction trucks from County Line Road.
But many truckers resist complying with demands that they take a 12-mile detour on Meadow Pointe Boulevard and State Road 54. They grumble about the cost in time and gas.
Recently, after residents complained about truckers using County Line Road, a Pasco sheriff's deputy posted himself at County Line and Mansfield Boulevard.
Widening County Line won't solve all of Meadow Pointe's traffic woes. The neighborhood is bulging with construction and advancing toward what developers expect to be more than 5,000 homes.
Extra relief should arrive with the eastward extension of State Road 56, from Bruce B. Downs to Meadow Pointe boulevards. SR 56 would provide another way out of Meadow Pointe and a alternate commuter route to Interstate 75.
Meadow Pointe developer Don Buck has been finalizing engineering plans on the next leg of SR 56. It's envisioned as a relatively high-speed rural highway.
"I'd say it could open in 18 to 24 months, assuming the plans are approved," said Buck, who's contractually obliged to have the highway in place by no later than 2008.