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The Interstate Is Crumbling. Try Fixing the Section Used by 200,000 Vehicles a Day.
The Wall Street Journal ^ | May 28, 2019 | Arian Campo-Flores and Paul Overberg

Posted on 06/22/2019 3:43:56 PM PDT by Tolerance Sucks Rocks

ORLANDO, Fla.—The state dubbed it the I-4 Ultimate for its grand scope. For some here, it’s more like the ultimate headache.

A reconstruction of 21 miles of congested interstate highway through the heart of Orlando will build or rebuild 140 bridges, redesign 15 interchanges, move exits and add new toll lanes, in a $2.3 billion project to smooth traffic through one of the nation’s fastest-growing cities.

Dense cities have grown up around the aging freeways, hemming them in so that expensive engineering feats are needed to do work on them. Yet work is often unavoidable. I-4, for instance, was built in the 1960s to handle 70,000 vehicles a day. Now it is jammed with up to 200,000.

Patrick Kling drives to his downtown job each day through the highway reconstruction zone. He sometimes finds the route bewildering.

Under the contract, the builder must keep the same number of lanes operating during the day as there were before construction started. The result is a repeatedly altered traffic flow, with on-ramps and off-ramps periodically shut down and detours posted.

Construction crews regularly shift lanes leftward onto medians or rightward onto shoulders to accommodate workers and equipment, which must be walled off from the traffic by concrete barriers. Workers have reduced each lane’s width by a foot to gain space for construction, crowding the cars that are navigating the shifting lanes.

To help drivers cope, the project created an interactive map showing the latest road closures and a YouTube channel that lets people visualize how to maneuver before they face the changes at highway speed . . .

(Excerpt) Read more at wsj.com ...


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Constitution/Conservatism; Extended News; Government; News/Current Events; US: Florida
KEYWORDS: 5thamendment; accidents; bonds; bridges; congestion; congestionpricing; construction; damage; delays; eminentdomain; expresslanes; fdot; flooding; florida; graniteconstruction; highways; homeowners; i4; i4mobilitypartners; i4ultimate; infrastructure; injuries; irma; laneconstruction; moodys; noise; orangecounty; orlando; osha; p3; ppp; roads; skanska; tolls; traffic; transportation; urbanplanning; utilities; weather
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There is a paywall involved with this article.
1 posted on 06/22/2019 3:43:56 PM PDT by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
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To: Tolerance Sucks Rocks

I-4 across central florida, an interstate. LOL


2 posted on 06/22/2019 3:46:47 PM PDT by morphing libertarian ( Use Comey's Report, Indict Hillary now; build Kate's wall. --- Proud Smelly Walmart Deplorable)
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To: morphing libertarian

Hawaii has an Interstate, or so I heard.


3 posted on 06/22/2019 3:48:28 PM PDT by Radix (Natural Born Citizens have Citizen parents)
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To: Tolerance Sucks Rocks

Similar to Denver I-70, maybe worse.

I often wonder how, why, this done without eminent domain.


4 posted on 06/22/2019 3:48:37 PM PDT by Balding_Eagle ( The Great Wall of Trump ---- 100% sealing of the border. Coming soon.)
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To: morphing libertarian

Well, it’s considered part of the “interstate highway system”, even though I-4 does not run through any other state.

There are many such interstate highways in this country, which are completely within just one state.


5 posted on 06/22/2019 3:51:03 PM PDT by Dilbert San Diego
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To: Tolerance Sucks Rocks; All

Meanwhile, Kushner wants to send $50 billion to Pakistan.


6 posted on 06/22/2019 3:54:26 PM PDT by Cobra64 (Common sense isnÂ’t common anymore.)
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To: Tolerance Sucks Rocks

Holy Toledo! :)


7 posted on 06/22/2019 3:54:37 PM PDT by W. (NRA life member! Cost me 500 bones, but oh, well!)
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To: Dilbert San Diego

That is my point there are too many.

BTW i lived in Lakeland near I-4.


8 posted on 06/22/2019 4:04:29 PM PDT by morphing libertarian ( Use Comey's Report, Indict Hillary now; build Kate's wall. --- Proud Smelly Walmart Deplorable)
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To: Tolerance Sucks Rocks

The press has whining about this for 50 years. Roads get old, they get rebuilt. Life goes on.

What they really despise is freedom to travel.


9 posted on 06/22/2019 4:14:33 PM PDT by stinkerpot65 (Global warming is a Marxist lie.)
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To: BobL; sphinx; GreenLanternCorps; oldvirginian; All

Article had a correction on May 29, 2019.

PING.


10 posted on 06/22/2019 4:17:39 PM PDT by Tolerance Sucks Rocks (The Modern Democrat Party: America's largest hate group.)
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To: Tolerance Sucks Rocks

I think there are problems like this in many places, where the actual traffic on these highways, exceeds the amount expected by the road planners decades ago. And that’s why there is so much congestion, and wear and tear on many of the interstate highways.

There are also deferred maintenance issues, I’m sure.


11 posted on 06/22/2019 4:25:13 PM PDT by Dilbert San Diego
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To: Tolerance Sucks Rocks

Fun fact: Roads with fewer illegal aliens driving on them wear out at a slower rate!


12 posted on 06/22/2019 4:31:55 PM PDT by thoughtomator (The Clinton Coup attempt was a worse attack on the USA than was 9/11)
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To: Tolerance Sucks Rocks

Well isn’t that just fabulous. All the energy that should be going to building REAL THINGS are now spent on building elaborate paywalls in cyberspace!


13 posted on 06/22/2019 4:42:05 PM PDT by CondoleezzaProtege
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To: thoughtomator

14 posted on 06/22/2019 4:42:18 PM PDT by Tolerance Sucks Rocks (The Modern Democrat Party: America's largest hate group.)
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To: Tolerance Sucks Rocks

I lived in Orlando for forty years, from 1966 to 2006. Now I’m glad I live elsewhere; the traffic has only gotten worse since I left.


15 posted on 06/22/2019 4:44:01 PM PDT by Berosus (I wish I had as much faith in God as liberals have in government.)
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To: All
Road project complete and paid off? Keep paying the tolls, Influencers say (6/17/19)
16 posted on 06/22/2019 4:49:07 PM PDT by Tolerance Sucks Rocks (The Modern Democrat Party: America's largest hate group.)
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To: CondoleezzaProtege

The paywalls will prevent illegal Messicans from giving the WSJ computers e-Ebola. #BuildTheWall


17 posted on 06/22/2019 4:50:31 PM PDT by Tolerance Sucks Rocks (The Modern Democrat Party: America's largest hate group.)
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To: Stinker

What they really despise is freedom to travel: stinkerpot65!

Amen! stinkerpot65

Also, they don’t want us to have: a home where we want to live and a gas powered vehicle to take us where we want to work and go back to our homes.

They don’t want Interstates and any vehicles capable of driving 30-40 total miles per day.

They don’t want us to have vehicles bigger than a golf cart for two and again, only have minimal round trip range powered by 12 volt batteries needing to be recharged every 25 miles.

Gas powered Vehicles which enable us to live where we want to and work where we decide too are also taboo.

They hate the reality, that, “If we don’t like where we live or work, we can rent a Uhaul and go to another place to live and work.”

When will the high tax and overgovernored blue cities and blue states ban citizens from leaving their cities/states?


18 posted on 06/22/2019 5:17:47 PM PDT by Grampa Dave (KAG! Keep America Great! Vote for President Trump in 2020! KAG! Keep America Great!)
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To: Tolerance Sucks Rocks

-—A reconstruction of 21 miles of congested interstate highway through the heart of Orlando will build or rebuild 140 bridges, redesign 15 interchanges, move exits and add new toll lanes, in a $2.3 billion project to smooth traffic through one of the nation’s fastest-growing cities.-—

Assuming that $2.3 billion number is correct, I have to say that is an absolute steal. Where I am that would cost 20 times that amount, and take decades longer to complete.


19 posted on 06/22/2019 6:30:10 PM PDT by Paulie (America without Christ is like a Chemistry book without the periodic table.)
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To: Dilbert San Diego
I-4 was originally intended to pass to the west of downtown Orlando instead of through it. Unfortunately, a group of local notables with ties to LBJ lobbied and got the route changed so that it would instead pass through downtown Orlando. It was thought that this would help assure that downtown Orlando and their valuable properties there would not wither because a major flow of traffic had been diverted.

Contrary to those expectations, I-4 led to massive growth of new suburbs north of Orlando, which in turn caused I-4 to soon exceed its design capacity. The daily commute from north of Orlando became a vexation and a major political issue. A series of upgrades and expansions to I-4 helped only temporarily and marginally because they could not keep up with the area's burgeoning growth.

The current project -- called I-4 Ultimate -- will create new privately owned tolled lanes but do little to remedy the miseries of driving I-4 as experienced by most motorists. In time, it will become apparent that the principal beneficiaries are the private interests who are financing the new toll lanes in return for guaranteed profits in near perpetuity.

Oddly, after I-4 was built, downtown Orlando withered as its large department stores and many small retailers and service shops lost much of their customer base. The customers instead preferred to shop at the enormous mall and strip centers that sprouted close to their new homes in the north of Orlando. The loss of downtown jobs also devastated the nearby Black community and pushed many of its residents deep into poverty. Local civil rights activists tend to regard the placement of I-4 and local toll roads as bulldozing Blacks and taking their jobs.

Notably, in recent years as I-4 became ever more overburdened, downtown Orlando and many of the neighborhoods around it began to experience growth and redevelopment -- even the neighborhood that I grew up in. In broad terms, this is probably what would have happened decades earlier had I-4 not been routed through downtown Orlando.

20 posted on 06/23/2019 2:36:32 AM PDT by Rockingham
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