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Letter to the editor

State closes wallet on expressway plans

This latest move brings to a standstill the $155-million project meant to relieve Bruce B. Downs.

By Bill Coats, Times Staff Writer
Published February 15, 2008

NEW TAMPA 

The state is drawing the same line as two local government agencies, refusing for now to spend any more money on plans for an east-west expressway in New Tampa.

That means the road, long sought as a way to siphon some of the traffic overloading Bruce B. Downs Boulevard, is stalled until somebody has a change of heart.

The $155-million project bogged down last summer over the need for additional impact studies costing an estimated $500,000. The city of Tampa, which had commissioned such studies with aid from the state, recently decided it wouldn't pay.

The Tampa-Hillsborough Expressway Authority, which borrowed $1.5-million from the state to explore the project's feasibility, said it couldn't pay either.

Officials at the Florida Department of Transportation "have had discussions with them about the financing plan," spokeswoman Kris Carson said. "But at this time we cannot finance it."

"It's pretty much dead, and we like to let sleeping dogs lie," quipped Suzanne Fister Levine, a retiree in West Meadows, the only New Tampa neighborhood ever to generate strong opposition to the expressway.

But Frank Margarella, chairman of a transportation advisory board for northeast Hillsborough County, bemoaned the stalemate, saying it was a sign of a slowing economy and a state mired in tax controversy.

"Nobody wants to dig in their pockets for this, that and the other," said Margarella, who chairs the New North Transportation Alliance.

The road was conceived more than a decade ago. Skirting the Cypress Creek Preserve, it would enable New Tampa commuters to bypass Tampa Palms and a crowded stretch of Bearss Avenue en route to Interstate 275.

But the road's projected cost soared in recent years. Now, the only surviving strategy is for a private investor to build the road and recoup the costs through 40 years of tolls that would quickly approach $1 per mile. The expressway authority recruited such an investor, Vancouver-based Plenary Group.

The road is controversial in West Meadows because it would convert the community's main drag, New Tampa Boulevard, into a through road leading across Interstate 75 to the expressway.

"It's going to cut the subdivision in half," Levine said.

"Solutions sometimes create a little bit of pain," Margarella said. "But we get used to it and it's all for the better."

In Tampa Palms, civic leader Bill Shimer had mixed reactions. Shimer supports the expressway to relieve Bruce B. Downs, particularly the southern half, the last portion scheduled to be widened.

But Shimer has repeatedly voiced concerns that a bridge over I-75, a linchpin between the expressway and New Tampa Boulevard, might be built early. City officials advocated that.

Shimer worried that drivers avoiding Bruce B. Downs would cross I-75, then, with no expressway, use Tampa Palms Boulevard as a bypass.

"We're interested in seeing the bridge and the extension to I-275 going in together," Shimer said. "The two together would relieve traffic to Tampa Palms."

Steve Daignault, administrator of Tampa's public works and utilities departments, said last week that the city has obtained all permits and nearly $20-million to build the bridge separately.

But he also suggested that the bridge and the expressway would live - or die - together.

"We want to make sure that something is going to happen with the east-west road before we build a bridge," Daignault said.

Bill Coats can be reached at 813 269-5309 or coats@sptimes.com.

[Last modified February 14, 2008, 21:39:50]