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Crosstown usage may grow slowly

Yes, there have been construction problems. But other toll roads faced a similar beginning.

By JEAN HELLER
Published January 16, 2006

TAMPA - Day by day, segment by segment, the elevated lanes of Lee Roy Selmon Crosstown Expressway edge ever closer to downtown Tampa.

Highway officials say they are on schedule for a grand opening for the problem-plagued, high-tech, structurally spectacular, reversible-lane project in August, if not earlier.

When the lanes open in August, a year behind schedule, SunPass users will have an express route between Tampa and Brandon. Motorists from Pinellas County headed for Lakeland or Orlando could take the Crosstown expressway to Interstate 75 and then north to Interstate 4 instead of battling Tampa rush hour traffic on Interstate 275.

All three lanes of the roadway will be westbound in the mornings and eastbound in the evenings.

History suggests they shouldn't be surprised if initial public response is tepid, bordering on uninterested.

Part of the reluctance to accept the elevated bridge despite the commuting advantages between Brandon and Tampa would stem from its storied history. First a support column collapsed under the weight of a road section being set in place, and then the hierarchy of the Tampa Hillsborough Expressway Authority collapsed in the ensuing scandal.

But an examination of the operational startup of two other new toll roads in the Tampa Bay area - roads that went from groundbreaking to ribbon cutting without a serious hitch - show slow public acceptance, too.

The first few years of operations for the original Crosstown, linking Gandy Boulevard and downtown Tampa, were overwhelmingly unspectacular. Serious observers expressed doubts the road would ever pay for itself.

The Veterans Expressway, a north-south route through Hillsborough County intended to ease congestion on North Dale Mabry, saw fewer than 16-million traffic transactions in 1996, its first full year of operation. That's fewer than 44,000 transactions a day. If every vehicle on the road made a round trip, paying two entry and two exit tolls a day, that would have been fewer than 11,000 vehicles a day in its first year.

Now, Florida's Turnpike Enterprise, which built the road, is considering plans to widen parts of the Veterans from four to eight lanes to accommodate growth in northern Hillsborough and central Pasco counties; traffic last year had grown 176 percent over 1996.

The Suncoast Parkway through Pasco and Hernando counties got off to an even slower start than the Veterans.

"Every toll road has a rampup period factored in," said Joanne Hurley, spokeswoman for Florida's Turnpike. "It takes a while for word to get out. It takes a while to get a new road on maps and on Internet map programs. People have to find the road and get used to paying the tolls in return for the savings in time, the convenience and the added safety."

Ralph Mervine, interim executive director of the Tampa Hillsborough Expressway Authority, thinks people will quickly get past the problems the elevated lanes incurred during construction and accept the new express route between Brandon and Tampa.

Mervine bases his optimism on public response to the opening in November of the first bridge segment over I-75. It was opened, eastbound only, from the area of U.S. 301 to Brandon Boulevard to give motorists easier access to the Westfield Brandon mall during the holidays. Public response was so positive, Mervine said, that he decided to leave the lanes open from 4 p.m. to 9 p.m. permanently, though they are closed now for two weeks for construction.

But some people say they're interested only in finding ways to avoid the elevated segments.

Jennifer Kodalen of Valrico said she wouldn't consider using the road, despite the convenience it would provide on her trips to shop at MacDill Air Force Base.

"I'd go through 25 stoplights before I risked my life on that road," Kodalen said.

Others are more open to the idea.

Courtney Stokes of Plant City said he thinks that after such a failure with the road, engineers will be certain to get it right the second time. "When you make a mistake and the whole world is watching, you don't want to be the guy who allows it to happen again," Stokes said. "I'd give it a shot. Hopefully ... they'll get it right this time."

--Times staff writers Andrew Meacham, Helen Anne Travis and Letitia Stein contributed to this report.

[Last modified January 16, 2006, 00:40:11]