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 ...
I-4 across central florida, an interstate. LOL
Hawaii has an Interstate, or so I heard.
Similar to Denver I-70, maybe worse.
I often wonder how, why, this done without eminent domain.
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.
Meanwhile, Kushner wants to send $50 billion to Pakistan.
Holy Toledo! :)
That is my point there are too many.
BTW i lived in Lakeland near I-4.
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.
Article had a correction on May 29, 2019.
PING.
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.
Fun fact: Roads with fewer illegal aliens driving on them wear out at a slower rate!
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!
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.
The paywalls will prevent illegal Messicans from giving the WSJ computers e-Ebola. #BuildTheWall
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?
-—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.
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.
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