Plans rolled out to widen the turnpike to 10 lanes
The thousands of South Floridians who each day commute on Florida’s Turnpike will finally see some relief in the coming years — with the state advancing plans to widen stretches of the highway from six to 10 lanes in Broward and Palm Beach counties.
Up ahead will be challenges: Before any traffic improvements come for commuters, years of construction first will lead to more traffic tie-ups. Some homeowners worry that conditions will worsen for them, given they’ll live next to an even wider corridor. Still, some drivers already can picture a break from all the traffic headaches.
Commuter Stephanie Servaites takes the turnpike from her Plantation home to the Golden Glades in Miami-Dade each weekday for work as an office manager. “Praise the Lord!” she said when told about the plans. “It’s a good thing to be very honest. The sheer volume of cars on the road daily, it’s very, very high. Congestion is terrible.”
More and more traffic
State officials are studying how the turnpike — which first opened to the public in 1957 as the Sunshine State Parkway — needs to become wider to meet the demand that is projected on the roads in the next two decades.
The 2019 average daily traffic on Florida’s Turnpike in Broward before the pandemic varied from nearly 146,000 south of Sunrise Boulevard to 96,000 north of Sample Road. Recent data shows that traffic is quickly returning to those levels. And forecasts for the year 2045 predict traffic volumes will surge to 210,000 south of Sunrise Boulevard and 150,000 north of Sample Road.
In Broward, the road widening is expected along 17 miles from south of I-595 stretching north to Wiles Road. Two additional lanes will be added in each of the northbound and southbound roads, which now have three lanes each. The plans are still underway, with nothing yet cast in concrete.
In Palm Beach County, proposed improvements include widening the turnpike north of Glades Road to north of Atlantic Avenue from the existing six-lane divided expressway to 10 lanes. Plans in the design phase also include widening a seven-mile segment of the turnpike between West Palm Beach north of Okeechobee Boulevard. The plan calls to turn four lanes to eight.
“I think it’s a good idea. At the rush-hour mark it can get really congested,” said Veronika Vernachio, who commutes to a work from Boynton Beach to Plantation and back on the Turnpike. An accident ties everybody up because there’s “not enough lanes to move people around.” She said dealing with the construction might be tough at first but “long-term it’s going to be beneficial.”
Drawing opposition
Some elected officials are prepared for an encroachment too close for comfort. In Coconut Creek, officials say the road shifts west only in the section of the road between Atlantic Boulevard and Wiles Road. That
puts the entire four lanes of the expansion on the Coconut Creek side of the road.
“They will literally be putting the turnpike into people’s backyards,” said an angry Vice Mayor Josh Rydell. He called it a “disaster.”
He said fumes and noise will be a nightmare for the people within earshot. Construction will take years, at night, and there will still be round-the-clock car traffic, he said.
“Never ending,” Rydell said.
From the outside of the theater in the senior community Wynmoor, Jackie Railey, president of the Wymoor Community Council, can already see the 18-wheelers whizzing by. The speed limit is 70 mph on the turnpike.
“We have buildings that are a feet away from the Turnpike,” said Railey, who is also a city commissioner. “If they want to put four lanes closer to us, it would be horrific. Not just noise, but pollution. It’s just not acceptable.
“You’re ruining everyone’s quality of life, not to mention their property values,” she said.
Accommodating more cars
State highway officials said the plan would improve the existing I-595, Sunrise Boulevard, Commercial Boulevard, Atlantic Boulevard, Coconut Creek Parkway, and Sample Road interchanges, and construct
new interchanges at Oakland Park Boulevard and Cypress Creek Road/McNab Road.
“In order to accommodate travel demand, eight lanes are needed now, from south of Atlantic Boulevard to Wiles Road, and 10 lanes will be needed within this segment by 2040,” according to Ivette Ruiz-Paz, a spokeswoman for Florida’s Turnpike Enterprise with the Florida Department of Transportation.
According to the agency’s website, if nothing is done to alleviate the growing strain, there will be more crashes and gridlock.
Some leaders also affected by the proposal aren’t making up their minds yet until they get more information, but acknowledge change is inevitable.
“We can’t change the traffic, but we have to learn how to manage it,” said Plantation Mayor Lynn Stoner.
But in Davie, options being discussed by the state “includes taking of property from some of the businesses” for the widening, said Phillip Holste, the assistant town administrator. Holste estimates three to five businesses might lose their land, but it’s still too early to know.
“We don’t know the exact extent of the impact on Davie
businesses,” he said.