So far, it seems the year is off to a strong start. Density is increasing downtown, city public-art projects are abounding and road improvements are in the works both on the drawing board and on hard ground.

First off the block is the Manhattan Avenue widening project. This $9.3 million job will widen the two-lane road to five lanes (two northbound, two southbound and one center-turn lane) along the stretch between Euclid Avenue and Gandy Boulevard.

It’s hoped the construction, expected to take about 18 months, will ease congestion and reduce flooding, as a new stormwater system and retention pond also will be installed.

City council is holding a public groundbreaking ceremony for the project Jan. 24 at 10:30 a.m. The starting location hasn’t been revealed yet, but I’m sure that will get settled soon.

Area residents can expect some headaches and snarls, but that comes with the territory of major construction work. In the long run, I’m guessing most of them will breathe sighs of relief as traffic lightens along Manhattan and its side streets.

In other road news, City Councilman John Dingfelder sent me a note about the council’s recent vote to fund an engineering study for the intersection of Dale Mabry Highway and Kennedy Boulevard.

The crossing has needed attention for a while now. Back in June, a peek at the city’s “Top 100” list of high-incident traffic-crash locations revealed 16 South Tampa intersections making the charts. Most of them radiated out in cross formation from an epicenter at Dale Mabry and Kennedy.

At the time, that intersection ranked No. 39 on the list, with 12 crashes in a 90-day period. I speculated many of them were left-turn fiascos, based solely on personal experience.

Fast-forward six months and things haven’t changed much. As of Jan. 6, the Dale Mabry/Kennedy intersection was up to No. 31 on the charts, but logged fewer accidents – 11 crashes in 90 days. Guess that means we’re having slightly fewer crashes overall.

The engineering study is a welcome step toward improvement. In his e-mail, Dingfelder explained the plan: to work with the Florida Department of Transportation to add an additional northbound lane on Dale Mabry “to assist traffic getting through that miserable spot.”

The city hopes this will not only help motorists and increase safety, but also might lessen neighborhood cut-through traffic in the area. I’m looking forward to seeing how it all pans out.



From the desk of Mayor Pam
Right before the New Year, I also received an e-mail from Mayor Pam Iorio, who made my day by telling me she regularly enjoys this column.

She was very gracious in addressing some of my more cynical quips about the state of Tampa’s streets, and she shed light on the future of basic roadway improvements.

Rather than paraphrase, I’m going to fully reproduce a portion of her well-put message below. It strengthened my confidence that Tampa is on the right path. I hope it does the same for you:



Dear Mitzi,

When I first became mayor, I was surprised to learn how little the city spent on basic road improvements. The budget in 2003 for street resurfacing, sign replacement, sidewalks and traffic calming was $2.6 million.

Since then we have embarked on a program called “Investing in Neighborhoods.” Each year we put more money into those basic areas I mentioned above. In the last budget adopted in October, we allocated $5.5 million.

Of that amount, $2.3 (million) goes for street resurfacing – not nearly enough. We have 2,600 miles of roadway and only address about 2.3 percent of our total roadways every year. To add a further challenge, material costs have gone up dramatically.

Our new transportation director, Roy LaMotte, spends a lot of time at neighborhood meetings addressing concerns, but we want to be realistic about what can be accomplished given the limitations of the budget. 

However, I have given clear direction to our transportation and budgeting departments – that as long as I am mayor, I want to see the amount devoted to basic roadway improvements increase each budget year.

This is an important part of what makes a quality city.

Thanks for bringing issues to our attention and we will continue to work to address them.

Sincerely,

Pam



Send rants and raves about South Tampa traffic to Mitzi Gordon at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).