Follow that scheme: Another Florida toll road we don’t need
Elvis made some awful movies, but one that was a cut above the rest was “Follow That Dream,” a yarn about the adventures of a family traveling through rural Florida in a jalopy. Early in the movie, the old car takes a wrong turn onto a still-unopened highway. It was prophetic.
Don’t watch “Follow That Dream” for the acting. You’ll be disappointed. Watch it for the location scenery: the Withlacoochee River, a roadside in Yankeetown, the stately old courthouse in Inverness and a lonely stretch of U.S. 19 north of Tampa, back when it was two lanes.
Filmed in the summer of ’61 in and around Crystal River and Ocala, the movie is mostly forgotten. To see it is to catch glimpses of Florida the way it used to look — mostly green and pristine. Far too much of Florida has been bulldozed, paved and developed, and a stubborn plan persists to open another new highway in that part of the state, despite intense community opposition.
Despite what’s in the movie, that part of Florida didn’t need another new road then, and it doesn’t need one now.
You may recall, last year the state Legislature pulled the plug — only partly, it turns out — on a 2019 plan for three massive toll roads pushed by the road-building industry and a former Senate president, Bill Galvano. Opposition was intense and unyielding, even in some of the most conservative parts of the state.
Lawmakers wrote a repeal bill (SB 100) that requires the Department of Transportation to study extending Florida’s Turnpike north from Wildwood, where it ends. Tucked inside the bill is this: “The Legislature finds that the extension of the Florida Turnpike from its northerly terminus in Wildwood to a logical and appropriate terminus as determined by the Department of Transportation is in the strategic interest of the state.”
This illogical and environmentally disastrous project that refuses to die is the Northern Turnpike Extension. Four alternate routes are on the FDOT drawing board — including one Elvis himself would recognize near Yankeetown in Levy County. FDOT has to provide a full report to the governor and Legislature a year from now.
Area residents and protectors of natural Florida are once again burning up social media mobilizing opposition, and two hearings are scheduled next week in Levy and Marion counties.
Audubon Florida’s website has a good article that provides a lot of background, and notes that 1,500 people, most of them opposed, showed up at two recent hearings. Long-time Florida environmental writer Craig Pittman dissects this boondoggle for the Florida Phoenix, including its potential to enrich landowners along the proposed routes.
The idea of a Turnpike connector has been kicking around forever — almost since the soundtrack song “Follow That Dream” was a hit in 1962.
When Bob Martinez was governor in the late 1980s, his transportation secretary, Kaye Henderson, pushed a plan to raise tolls on the Turnpike to pay for feeder roads upstate, including one from Wildwood to a place almost nobody could find on a map: Lebanon Station in Levy County.
That was a time that’s hard to imagine in today’s Florida. The Broward legislative delegation was powerful, and the just-opened Sawgrass Expressway was bleeding red ink because drivers were not yet using it. So, to nail down the needed support of Broward legislators, the state agreed to take over the Sawgrass and cover its debts.
More than three decades later, the state is still scaring people in rural Florida with plans for a Turnpike extension that would be phenomenally expensive at a time when gas tax revenues are way down. One extension route would tear through the 54,000acre Goethe State Forest, even though existing roads in that part of the state are way below capacity. If you’ve ever driven U.S. 19 to Chiefland, you know what I’m talking about.
Something doesn’t smell right. To paraphrase the King — follow that scheme.