Plan to link Sawgrass with 95, turnpike rolls on

It would cut traffic on SW 10th Street

Plans to extend the Sawgrass Expressway in Deerfield Beach to link it with Florida’s Turnpike and Interstate 95 are picking up speed.

Construction could start as early as 2020, said Anson Sonnett, a state Department of Transportation engineer overseeing the project.

A connection was part of the original plans when the Sawgrass Expressway opened in 1986. Several communities supported the link, but some residents of Deerfield Beach resisted because it would slice through one of the city’s biggest resi-

dential developments, Century Village, as well as several business areas.

Florida Department of Transportation officials showed a crowd of about 300 people ideas for express lanes to connect the thoroughfares at a meeting Wednesday night.

This is the closest the plans have come to becoming realty in the 30 years of debating the extension.

“Express lanes are the only way out of the traffic problems that are piling up on Southwest 10th Street,” Sonnett said.

Eight traffic lights lie between the end of the Sawgrass and the first onramp for I-95. That has led to gridlock during peak hours and an above-average number of crashes at Southwest 10th Street’s intersections with Powerline Road and Military Trail, Sonnett said.

“When traffic gets the way it is now on Southwest 10th Street, you can’t address it with signal timing,” he said.

Studies have shown the four-lane, 21⁄2-mile stretch of road between the highways can no longer handle an estimated 45,000 vehicles each day.

An 18-point plan was presented last December outlining specific features the extension should have to balance the need for traffic to flow quickly and accommodate local traffic.

The road designs displayed Wednesday evening showed a wider Southwest 10th Street with plans to dig an expressway “trench” down the middle to bypass the traffic signals and lessen the congestion on the surface roads that will run on both sides of the trench.

Another possible design would put express lanes on the north side of Southwest 10th Street’s local traffic.

Sonnett estimated it would take three to four years to build. The money — an estimated $500 million — has been budgeted

The link would take an estimated three to four years to build, a DOT official told residents.

for 2025, but Sonnett said it could get priority sooner.

Huge printouts on display at the meeting showed the hurdles planners will have to negotiate to connect these roads, including Tri-Rail tracks, numerous developments and businesses that depend on Southwest 10th Street.

Balancing commuters’ need for a fast road and Deerfield Beach residents’ resistance to such a road has been debated for decades.

Sonnett said the goal of the final design would meet both sets of needs.

“We want to have two roads,” he said. “One would be a local 10th Street like you have today. Another … would be a limited access” road.

Residents wondered whether putting tolls on the new express lanes would drive commuters onto the local road anyway. Others asked why the connection couldn’t be located along Sample Road at the Deerfield-Pompano Beach border or Palmetto Park Road in Boca.

But even the locals are ready for something that reduces traffic.

Horacio Danovich, who works for the city of Pompano Beach, said he’s tired of the long waits at the traffic lights on Southwest 10th Street as he returns home to Century Village and has to compete with commuters going farther west to Coconut Creek, Coral Springs and Parkland.

“This highway is way overdue,” he said.