Flyovers get ax in Lee County

951 is a dead issue!!!

Flyovers get ax in Lee
County

County panel nixes handful of area road
projects

By Brian Liberatore • bliberatore@news-press.
com • October 23, 2010

1:10 A.M. — Lee County leaders say they want
transportation planning that does more than add
lanes, flyovers and more pavement. But finding
alternatives has proven elusive.
Members of the Metropolitan Planning Organization,
a group of 17 elected officials, on Friday axed a
handful of controversial road projects.
Gone from the region’s long range plan, a state-
mandated 25-year road work blueprint, are:
• The Colonial Boulevard flyover in Fort Myers.
• An extension of Route 951 south of Corkscrew
Road connecting to Collier County.
• A flyover on Veterans Parkway over Santa Barbara
Boulevard in Cape Coral.
Finding and funding alternatives that work, MPO
members said, will be harder than cutting out what
doesn’t work.
“In my lifetime we will remember $4 gas as a
luxury,” said Lee County Commissioner Brian
Bigelow. “We need to accept that as reality. We are
truly, truly addicted to that petroleum. And we need
to change how we (plan for transportation).”
The state requires planning boards across Florida
to submit an updated long-range plan every five
years. Past plans moved through approvals with
little fanfare and minimal comment. Friday’s hours-
long meeting, Lee County Commission Chairwoman
Tammy Hall said, marked a sea change.
“We recognize that we’re going to add another
600,000 people here,” Hall said. “We have to make
sure that we’re doing everything in our power not to
just make this a concrete jungle.”
This is the first year the long-range plan details
public transportation. It’s a hopeful sign, said Darla
Letourneau, a member of BikeWalkLee, but little more

than paper without the funds to back it up.
County taxpayers spend about $12 million to keep a
minimal bus system running, that does little to keep
Lee County’s 480,000 drivers out of their cars. A
recent survey found more than three quarters of
riders who use the system have no other choice.
Developers, smart growth advocates, and
environmentalists lined up at the microphone Friday
lobbying the group to change direction.
The classic planning model doesn’t work,
Letourneau said. Engineers figure peak traffic
volumes during peak season, project those numbers
into the future and build more lanes to keep traffic
moving as quickly as possible. The county ends up
with sprawling, multi-lane highways, she said. The
county is paying to build a flyover on Summerlin
Road over College Parkway similar to structures on
Colonial and Gladiolus Drive.
“The model just spews things out that people view
as gospel,” Letourneau said. “Are we willing to tear u
p our neighborhoods for slightly less
congestion?”
The MPO’s long-range plan ignited public furor
earlier this year when engineers presented a plan
for a multi-level expressway running down the
length of Colonial.
Business owners along the corridor ripped the plan
as a commerce-killer and derided public officials for
spending $4.5 million studying a project with scant
support.

“The Colonial project is a lesson on a process that
is broken,” said Pamela Templeton. She co-owns
Fort Myers Toyota on the boulevard and helped lead
the charge against the elevated highway.
Cape business leader Steve Krieg and developer Dan
Creighton mirrored some of the same arguments as
they spoke against a flyover on Veterans Boulevard.
“Pamela (Templeton) is asking for a fundamental
shift to happen in this county,” Krieg said. “I could
not agree more.”
To change the pattern, Letourneau said the county
needed to view public transit, sidewalks, bike lanes
and bike paths as more than afterthoughts, putting
dollars behind those alternate forms of
transportation.
“If you want to get serious about it, you have to
make some of those policy decisions now or it will
never get there,” Letourneau said.
The MPO will meet again before the end of the year
to figure out funding for road projects. Some on the
board hope they can divert more funds to road-
widening alternatives.

Short term projects
Though most of the discussion at Friday’s
Metropolitan Planning Organization focused on what
won’t be built, the agency’s long-range plan also
includes more imminent projects and those under way.
• Widening of State Route 82 to six lanes from
Interstate 75 to Lee Boulevard
• Widening of Route 41 to six lanes from Corkscrew
Road to San Carlos Boulevard
• Widening of Interstate 75 to six lanes from Colonial
Boulevard to Route 80.
• Widening of Daniels Parkway to six lanes from
Chamberlain Parkway to Gateway Boulevard.
• Widening of Six Mile Cypress Parkway to four lanes
from north of Daniels Parkway to south of Colonial.
• Metro Parkway extension from Six Mile Cypress
Parkway to U.S. 41.