Officials to show vision of I-95 link

Sawgrass lanes will be a fast connection for commuters

It’s a traffic upgrade three decades in the making: The Sawgrass Expressway is going to link to Interstate 95 so that thousands of South Floridians get to work faster each day.

Construction could begin in just four years.

So on Tuesday, state transit officials for the first time will publicly display actual designs for the highway link. They’ll demonstrate two preliminary concepts for express lanes that would run along Southwest 10th Street to unite the Sawgrass with I-95 in Deerfield Beach.

These days, it’s common to have traffic tie-ups on Southwest 10th. There are eight traffic lights along the 2

1⁄2-mile stretch. Traffic estimates show the road is failing at key times during the day, carrying an estimated 45,000 cars a day. Sometimes, intersections don’t clear out during green lights because lines of cars are waiting at the next light.

Coral Springs Mayor Skip Campbell calls the connector a “no-brainer,” for which the time has come. The former state senator recalls long ago when the Sawgrass opened and a skeptic doubted it would be widely used. “Now you go out there, and it’s all backed up because you don’t have an expressway to Interstate 95,” he said.

Anson Sonnett, the transportation department engineer in charge of the project, is estimating that construction could start as soon as 2022.

The two concepts involve having most of the proposed express lanes at the same level, or going lower than most of the local traffic lanes. In one plan, the express lanes are situated on the north side of the current Southwest 10th Street, and another plan shows the express lanes wedged between the local lanes.

Both plans show a section of roadway that would be elevated 27 feet, or have a so-called flyover.

In the plan for the centerlocated lanes, the elevated part would be 180 feet long. The alternate plan would have an elevated stretch that’s 1,000 feet long before it drops to the ground level.

Sonnett said he realizes that some initial guiding principles for the road, formulated with community input, included no elevated roadway. But there was no other way, he said.

“We don’t see any other alternatives for that location,” Sonnett said.

Eric Torella, leader of the Waterways, a master community along Southwest 10th, was not thrilled when he saw the plans at his neighborhood meeting a few weeks ago. He said he is hoping the transportation department engineers go back to the drawing board and figure out another way. As it stands now, cars entering and exiting his community will have to drive under the elevated portion.

“The depressed highway should have started west of [Florida’s] Turnpike, so that we won’t have to deal with flyovers and that 595-esque look,” he said, referring to Interstate 595, the other Broward highway that runs west to east.

The Sawgrass, which opened in 1986, originally was going to be built with an I-95 connector. But because Southwest 10th goes through the heart of Deerfield, local opposition previously sent the plan off track — three times.

Tuesday’s design presentation will mark a milestone — the farthest this idea has ever gotten.

“As the western cities have grown, it’s become a much more urgent issue,” said Coral Springs Commissioner Larry Vignola, recounting when his 8-year-old daughter asked him why he was getting off one highway to get onto another. “When you get stuck in that bottleneck on Southwest 10th Street, it’s miserable.”

Tuesday’s open house and workshop will be from 2:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. at Deerfield’s Doubletree Hilton Hotel at 100 Fairway Drive.

COURTESY An artist’s conception shows what the Southwest 10th Street link may look like, uniting the Sawgrass and I-95.