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Parkway: Point A to Point B
With the Suncoast Parkway open, we wanted to learn whether the $507-million toll road topped the region's other north-south routes. Is it faster? An easier drive? Or just a more expensive way to make the same trip? With the certainty that no dollop of knowledge is too small to possess, three reporters set out in their cars about 9 a.m. Wednesday to find out. All of them started in downtown St. Petersburg and ended at the landmark Brooksville attraction Rogers' Christmas House Village. One took U.S. 19, one took interstates, and one took the Veterans Expressway and Suncoast Parkway. How was the ride?
Via US 19 | Via the parkways | Via the interstates
By JEAN HELLER
© St. Petersburg Times, published February 8, 2001
Suncoast Parkway; 70 minutes
The new Suncoast Parkway might be open, but it is not finished. Yet even with construction, it is a sweet stretch of road.
I left downtown St. Petersburg at the 9:05 a.m. inception of our three-way run to Brooksville. Going with the general flow of traffic but never more than five miles over the speed limit, I drove up Interstate 275, across the Howard Frankland Bridge, and turned off at the Tampa International Airport exit to pick up the Veterans Expressway at 9:22.
I suspected I was in for a race when my colleague, Alicia Caldwell, blew by me on the bridge, but I resisted the temptation to floor it. And I felt sorry for my other colleague, Craig Pittman, who had been assigned to make the trip to Brooksville on U.S. 19. I imagined Craig stopped at a red light.
The Suncoast Parkway connects to the Veterans Expressway at Van Dyke Road. Where the two roads diverge there is a Suncoast Parkway directional sign. But it would help those unfamiliar with local roads to have more warning, perhaps a sign a mile back telling parkway motorists to bear left.
Once in Pasco County the Suncoast speed limit is 65, up from 55 on the Veterans. But going north, you wouldn't learn that until you are past SR 52 in north Pasco because all the speed limit signs are masked. There are places in the northbound lanes that still need paving, particularly at the overpasses.
With a stray thought of Craig stopped at another red light, I reached the end of the parkway at 9:58 and pulled into Rogers' Christmas House Village in Brooksville at 10:15 a.m., a minute after my colleague, Alicia. My trip had taken one hour and 10 minutes and covered exactly 70 miles.
Craig showed up about half an hour later. He said the red lights weren't my imagination.
Returning to St. Petersburg, I encountered a lot of paving work. The left southbound lane was closed completely in Pasco between SR 52 and SR 54. And there were short delays at the junction of the Suncoast and the Veterans.
The new parkway is free for the time being, not because the state Department of Transportation is being kind, but because the toll booths are still under construction. Eventually, the parkway will cost $2.25 each way to where it currently ends in Brooksville, in addition to the $1.25 in Veterans tolls.
Environmental controversies aside, I recommend the Suncoast Parkway for travel between St. Petersburg or Tampa International Airport and Hernando County. Using the parkway from downtown Tampa to Pasco or Hernando would be trickier because it would add miles to the trip.
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