HILLSBOROUGH COUNTY, Fla. — According to the Tampa Hillsborough Expressway Authority, drivers are seeing more daily traffic and not just during rush hour.
“If you look at where we are today, we’re probably about 20% over today where we were projecting ourselves this year pre-pandemic,” said Gregory Slater, CEO and Executive Director of Tampa Hillsborough Expressway Authority.
That’s due to the rapid population growth the Tampa Bay area has seen.
THEA is working to stay ahead of it by working on projects to expand capacity.
“This is a solution we need to do so that our customers are not out there paying a toll and then still stuck in traffic,” said Slater.
THEA is working on an East Selmon Project Development and Environment Study.
The study is looking into creating additional lanes on the Selmon Expressway from the I-4 connector to US 301 in Hillsborough County.
“So what this planning study is looking at is adding another lane in each direction all the way out to 78th Street. Then when you get to 78th Street, adding an additional lane on the reversible express lane on the ground there, that’s not on the bridge structure, as well as on those local lanes,” said Slater.
This would add capacity to break up the bottlenecks near Falkenburg Road and downtown Tampa, as well as reduce congestion in the Brandon area.
“You’re going to start to see greater accessibility from this system out in Brandon. So we’re starting to see more and more balanced traffic between the reversible express lane up top and the local lanes underneath,” said Slater.
“That additional capacity... will prevent the congested condition, which will then prevent the recovery from the congestion that often takes over the original congestion," he added.
There’s a public meeting on Thursday, April 18, where people can learn more and share feedback.
- Open House: 5 p.m.
- Presentation: 6 p.m.
- Open House and Comments until 7 p.m.
- THEA Headquarters, 1104 E. Twiggs Street, Tampa
At this point in the process, as project leaders plan, they said it’s critically important to get input from drivers.
“A customer may come in and look at some maps and say, 'No, I drive this every day, I’m feeling it a little bit here, or I’m feeling it a little bit there,' and sometimes those are minor things that we can do to solve the challenges on our system that maybe wouldn’t show up in the data,” said Slater.
