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People explore the 32-mile route on the first day the toll road is open to regular traffic.
By MATTHEW WAITE and JOY PLATT
© St. Petersburg Times, published February 5, 2001
SHADY HILLS -- All the romance help books in the world couldn't do for Daniel Roman and Paula Nestor what the Suncoast Parkway will do for their relationship.
That and $3.25.
Nestor lives in Tampa, and on Sunday, she was part of a three-car caravan moving Roman to Spring Hill. A one-way trip to see the other on the parkway will cost $3.25 but will shave untold hours of driving off a dinner and a movie.
A SunPass electronic toll payer may be a future Valentine's Day present.
"There you go, honey, that's what I want," Nestor told Roman only half-joking.
Sunday was a day of firsts for the long-anticipated roadway. Real traffic was allowed for the first time, and thousands of cars took a drive from points in northern Hillsborough County, through Pasco and to State Road 50 in Hernando.
And Roman's caravan to Spring Hill may be the first to have broken down along the road.
Just after noon, on the Pasco side of County Line Road, the timing belt on a Ford Ranger driven by Roman's sister, Anna Marriman, snapped. Marriman, on her first trip down the road, struggled to tell the tow truck driver, who had never been on the parkway, where exactly they were south of Hernando County.
"Yeah, we'll go down in history," Nestor joked.
"Anna, you do it right when you do it," Roman said.
"I'm so proud," Marriman grumbled.
Joanne Hurley, the spokeswoman for the parkway project, said she was pleasantly surprised by the number of people who came out for a test drive.
"It's gorgeous," Hurley said. She began her daylong parkway tour at 5:30 Sunday morning. "This is just unbelievable. It looks like Interstate 4 out here."
Hurley said that at 8 a.m., when the first traffic was let onto the parkway, there were a few cars lined up at State Road 52 in Pasco. By mid-day, she said there were more cars coming north from Hillsborough County than going south.
Many out on the road were just driving it to drive it. One couple braved the drizzle and mid-50s temperatures to drive their BMW Z3 convertible with the top down.
Some were also seeing how long it took to go from place to place. To go from State Road 52 to State Road 54 and follow the speed limit, it takes nine minutes, a fraction of the time it would take on U.S. 41.
Even with slow traffic for construction and sightseeing drivers, a Times reporter with a global positioning device clocked an average speed of 61 miles per hour between the Hernando County line and Land O'Lakes. Going with the flow of traffic, speeds topped out just over 72 mph and slowed for traffic to 35 mph at the SR 54 off ramp.
The road will be free for drivers to try for two weeks, Hurley said. After Feb. 18, drivers who get on the parkway at the northern end at State Road 50 will have to pay 25 cents right away, then $1 in northern Pasco County and another $1 outside Land O'Lakes.
To drive to Tampa International Airport, drivers can tack on an additional $1.25 for tolls on the Veterans Expressway, which links to the Suncoast Parkway just south of Van Dyke Road in northern Hillsborough County.
But the tollway isn't for everyone.
For more than a year, Danilo Capelli has traveled about 100 miles per day on his route along U.S. 41 between Florida Crushed Stone in Brooksville to Midcoast Concrete in Odessa. Although the parkway route saved him 30 minutes and eight miles, the Brooksville truck driver said he will not use the new road often.
The parkway may be fine for two-axle vehicles, he said, but tolls for his 5-axle truck are as high as $5 per stop, making the route too expensive.
"I can see why it would be fine for a trip to the airport," Capelli said while stopped for coffee after making a Sunday morning dry-run along the parkway route. "But for trucks, it's not really cost-effective. The money I save in gasoline could never make up for what I would put out in a day."
Other truckers trying to shave time might take on the expense, Capelli said, but not him.
"We will probably just use the new road for a few days while it's free."
Chuck LaFaye paid the $2.50 to ride from the southern end of the Veterans Expressway at Westshore Boulevard in Tampa to the northern tip of the parkway at State Road 50 in Brooksville and back. During the summer, LaFaye and his family often make day trips to the Weeki Wachee River to go boating.
"This will be great," said LaFaye, who lives in south Tampa. "This road will open a lot of avenues up this way."
The new road is not without bumps.
Hurley said travelers can expect some slowdowns today in construction zones as workers try to make up for time lost to recent rains. And southbound traffic is likely to be heavy as commuters feel out a new route to work.
Another glitch could be in the medians. Emergency vehicles could run into trouble on the parkway because the medians have no turn-around points, officials at Spring Hill Fire Rescue said. While Florida Highway Patrol cruisers can make U-turns on the grassy areas, heavier emergency vehicles will get bogged down if they try the same thing.
"That is something we will address after the parkway has been open a few weeks," Hurley said.