Problems at some of South Shore’s Interstate 75 exit ramps have prompted enough letters I thought I’d devote a whole column to the subject.
Although I’ve received letters about long lines at the entrance ramps in the past, my recent column, “Crash Underscores Point of Telling Others Your Plans,” about a car that flipped 500 feet into the trees at the Sun City Center exit has prompted questions about guardrails on the ramps.
“I wish you would do a followup on your column (about the crash) because I cannot figure out why the Florida Department of Transportation allowed the guardrails to be installed on the wrong side of the roadway at Exit 240A (Sun City Center),” said Henry Niemczyk of Sun City Center. “Had the guardrails been installed correctly this incident might have been a minor traffic accident instead of a loss of two lives.”
Traffic backups also are questioned, as pointed out in a letter from Apollo Beach resident Randall Hunter.
“I believe that much congestion and many accidents could be prevented by two-laning the southbound exit ramp from I-75 onto Big Bend Road. During rush-hour traffic, cars back up onto the southbound traffic lane (of the interstate) resulting in major problems. The ramp is already fairly wide and could be easily widened. Shortening the median strip on Big Bend Road as you turn west would complete the fix,” Hunter said.
Other letters reflected similar questions about exit ramps at Gibsonton Drive, Big Bend Road, Apollo Beach/Riverview and Ruskin/Sun City Center, so I called FDOT’s spokeswoman Kris Carson. She put me in touch with the man with the answers – Dwayne Kile, FDOT’s district design engineer.
Guardrails are placed with the intention of deflecting out-of-control cars back onto the road, Kile explained.
Getting a car to ricochet back into its lane instead of running off the road can improve the safety of those in that car, but could also endanger other cars, if they get in the way.
“That’s why we can’t put guardrails in some places, like the left-hand side of 240A (the Sun City Center exit),” Kile said. “Yes, a car went off and landed in the trees. But the speed limit there is posted at 25 mph.”
To have gone 500 feet into the trees, the car must have been going over the posted speed limit, he said.
“We must look at all the possible angles (for a crash) and then make the best decision,” he explained. “The left side (of Exit 240 A at Sun City Center where the car went into the trees) is large and grassy. There are no houses. No roads. If we had the guardrail on the both sides, an out-of-control car could deflect back and forth causing multiple cars to lose control and flip. If it was on the opposite side (the right side as suggested in Niemczyk ‘s letter), out-of-control cars would be propelled at at an angle that would push them across lanes of traffic exiting the interstate,” he explained.
As for the Big Bend Road exit question, Kile said many places in northern Hillsborough County, especially at Bruce B. Downs Boulevard, have the same long backup problem.
“We realize this is an issue,” Kile said. “But Florida statutes say that 80 percent of our existing roadways must be maintained – resurfacing, fixing potholes and other conditions – before we can use any of our funds on new projects.”
A maintenance criteria rating system determines the status of this, he said.
“Then, if we have extra money, we can make improvements, start new projects. Or, if we can get private funds – like the (U.S.) 301 widening project,” Kile said.
That project got started 15 years ahead of schedule because of funds from developers who wanted to build homes along U.S. 301 but couldn’t until traffic studies supported it.
I use the Gibsonton Drive, Big Bend Road, and Ruskin/Sun City Center exits just about every day. I see accidents near the ramps all the time. But I see them other places too, mostly at crossing sites along U.S. 301.
The way I see it, after living almost 30 years in South Shore, is that there are just too many people moving in at once. The housing for them is being built based on zoning densities that were permitted in the 1960s and ’70s. Despite what many people think, county commissioners aren’t assigning these high growth densities now.
Many of the communities now being built have even lowered the densities on the original land use permits (or have been forced to lower them) by county commissioners or the zoning hearing master when residents make a fuss about overcrowding.
The only thing people can do about projects already on the books is to monitor any zoning or site-plan modifications. Those are the yellow signs you see everywhere you look that give hearing dates and project ID numbers.
We must remember that a lot of the plans for developments now in progress were “set in stone” during the era preceding the arrest of three county commissioners – in 1983 – who were led from the county courthouse in handcuffs, and later convicted for taking bribes.
Now, as in northern Hillsborough County, development has overloaded our schools, roads and other infrastructure.
After all, who wouldn’t want to live here? The weather’s great. The wages may be low, but there are plenty of jobs, and the lifestyle here is a whole a lot better than shoveling snow in the frozen North.
We’ll either have to get used to the growth or move out. That’s just the way it is.
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Penny Fletcher is the editor of The Sun and the South Shore News.