'Come Monday, it'll be better,' DOT promises of I-275 mess

But it won't be great. Of course, any relief is welcomed by drivers stuck in road work.

By Mike Brassfield, Times Staff Writer
Published February 23, 2008

The Howard Frankland Bridge heading into Tampa is a sea of traffic during the evening commute on Friday.
	[Skip O'Rourke | Times]

TAMPA -- You know those frustrating, mileslong traffic jams that have made the Pinellas County-to-Tampa commute so brutal lately?

Get used to them.

Highway officials, who were surprised by the bumper-to-bumper nightmare they have created, say there's only so much they can do to ease drivers' pain.

"We think it will get better than it is now," said John McShaffrey, a spokesman for the Florida Department of Transportation. The question is how much. The construction work on northbound Interstate 275, one of several major projects under way, is expected to last at least three more years.

This week's massive gridlock was caused by a relatively small change: the blocking off of an interstate merge lane between the Howard Avenue entrance ramp and the exit to downtown Tampa.

"I don't think anybody expected traffic backups to extend to the Howard Frankland Bridge and maybe beyond," McShaffrey said.

Motorists' frustration has skyrocketed. Cross-bay commuters are complaining that the mess has added 40 minutes to an hour to their drives.

"This is a total disaster. It's taking me forever to get home -- me and everybody else," said Gary Wiggins, 39, an accountant who shuttles between New Tampa and St. Petersburg's Gateway area.

It hasn't helped that Tampa-bound drivers from Pinellas also are running into major road construction at the ends of the Gandy Bridge and the Courtney Campbell Parkway -- the other cross-bay routes.

* * *

Here's the problem on I-275 near downtown Tampa: The highway briefly widens there from three northbound lanes to four. Some drivers use that milelong extra lane not to merge from Howard Avenue and to exit to downtown, but as a way to bypass traffic on the right.

"What they've been finding now is: 'Oh, there's a barrier wall up ahead. I've got to get back to the left,'" said McShaffrey, who said the last-second merging has wreaked havoc on traffic flow.

After a week of this, DOT officials made a change Friday: Instead of blocking only about half of the milelong merge lane, they have now closed almost all of it to prevent drivers from weaving in and out. They hope this will help unclog the highway.

Officials also expect traffic to run more smoothly once drivers get used to the lane closure.

"Come Monday, it'll be better than it's been this week," McShaffrey said.

The bad news: The barricade isn't going away any time soon. It will likely be there until next year as workers widen the highway overpasses that cross North Boulevard and the Hillsborough River.

Why block the lane in the first place? Because workers will be tearing down barrier walls along the edge of those overpasses.

"That fourth lane runs right next to that barrier wall," McShaffrey said. "If cars were still in that lane, they'd be able to go off the edge of that road -- a 20-foot drop."

* * *

The interstate between the Howard Frankland Bridge and downtown Tampa is usually jammed at rush hour anyway, with more cars than it was designed to handle. Nearly 100,000 vehicles a day drive that stretch of northbound I-275.

It's sensitive to even the smallest traffic hiccup.

That's why the state has been talking about widening it for 20 years, and now has finally started a major reconstruction of the highway. Most of the new lanes are being built on cleared land south of the road.

But not the part near downtown.

Russ Handler watches the daily rush-hour mess from his helicopter as a traffic reporter for Bay News 9. He notes that this is high traffic season, with snowbirds in town. Making things worse on I-275: The recent Florida State Fair, the coming Strawberry Festival and nightly Tampa Bay Lightning games.

And cross-bay drivers are now running into three huge construction projects on the Tampa side -- on I-275, on Gandy Boulevard, and on the cluster of roads south and west of Tampa International Airport.

"They've hit us every which way they possibly can," Handler said. "Making it from the Pinellas peninsula to downtown Tampa and beyond is difficult."

DOT spokeswoman Kris Carson said it isn't feasible to schedule the highway projects at different times. For one thing, they all take too long. The Gandy project, the current I-275 project and the airport roads project are going to take two, three and five years, respectively.

"I know people are frustrated," she said. "But if we wait until one project is finished before we start another one, we're never going to catch up."

Mike Brassfield can be reached at brassfield@sptimes.com or (813) 226-3435.

[Last modified February 23, 2008, 00:11:10]