Honk if you are stuck in traffic due to overbuilding

What happens when you place a full-page ad in the newspaper decrying traffic, overdevelopment and density overwhelming our roads? If you’re John Gore, a Boca Raton civic activist and retired corporate executive who heads BocaBeautiful.org, you listen to your phone ring off the hook all day.

“We’re just tapping into people’s anger— and that anger is growing by theweek,” Gore said Wednesday. “We’re watching all these enormous concrete-and-glass towers going up, and people are saying, ‘Howdid this happen?’ Somebody said to me, ‘It’s like Dubai has come to Boca.’”

It’s not just Boca. The over building over crowding angst is rippling throughout South Florida, with new construction melding with repairs and maintenance on existing bridges, roads and pipes to form a noxious stew of gridlock and gritted teeth.

A building boom in downtown Fort Lauderdale and near the Galleria Mall has coincided with bridge replacement on East Sunrise Boulevard, turning the heavily traveled U.S. 1 corridor along that stretch into a nightmare.

Newconstruction on Hollywood’s barrier island, including the recently opened Margaritaville resort, has coincided with a three-month state shutdown of the Dania Beach Boulevard drawbridge. The closure has led to huge backups along A 1A and Sheridan Street during the height of snowbird season.

And there’s the never-ending drama of Interstate 95, as new plastic poles for the so-called “Lexus lanes” are being installed in coming weeks. Those “variable-priced” toll lanes, which run as high as $11eachway in Miami during rush hour, will soon be going live in south Broward (fromthe Golden Glades to Interstate 595). Some day, the poles will run all the way to Delray Beach.

I’ve lived in South Florida nearly 27 years, and the “it’s-getting-too-crowded” cry has been a common refrain through the decades.

But nowwe really mean it. Development and population have grown, but viable mass transit hasn’t.

“Some people talk a good game about making this a pedestrianfriendly city, but let’s be real,” said Gore. “In Boca, we have people who can’t walk to the bathroom, much less to Publix.”

As high-rises sprout and green space yields to concrete, Gore also has concerns about flooding (especially with rising seas) and aging water mains and sewer systems.

Gore, a Boca resident since 2002, said his group nowhas1,500 members and Boca Watch, an allied group, has 11,000. They hope to flex some muscle in next year’s city elections by fielding and supporting candidates whowant to check unbridled development and take a more measured approach.

“Do you realize what’s being built now is LESS THAN HALF of what is planned for the ‘new’ [Boca] downtown?” read the ad from Gore’s group in Tuesday’s Sun Sentinel. “Theway to avoid future gridlock is relatively simple: EITHER BUILDMORE ROADS OR BUILD LESS BUILDINGS.”

Longtime Fort Lauderdale resident Jean Drake said she sawthe ad, showed it to some friends and said, “Why didn’t we think of doing that?”

Drake, whose father owned a restaurant on Las Olas in the 1930s, wrote me a letter lastmonth voicing skepticism about Fort Lauderdale’s pro---

posedWave streetcar system. Envisioned as part of Fort Lauderdale’s denser downtown, the Wave is behind schedule, over budget and will share cramped road space with cars. “We need wider streets or traffic will back up, unable to pass,” she wrote.

Over the last few weeks, I’ve been swapping horror stories with fellowresidents about worsening conditions. One endured a threehour morning drive fromFort Lauderdale to Miami. Another spoke of a commute fromHollywood beach to the airport that nowtakes 45 minutes instead of 15. Gore told me trips from A1Ato I-95 along Boca’s major east-west roads have also tripled in duration.

“Instead of the barrier island, we’ve started calling it the barricaded island,” Gore said.

I live on the mainland, but I knowthe feeling.

As towers keep rising and roads keep clogging, we’re all trapped like rats in amaze.

mmayo@tribpub.com, 954-356-4508.