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Bumper-to-Bumper Highway Gets ­Relief from State
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Jul 2, 2009 - 8:17:56 AM

By Penny Fletcher
penny@observernews.net

RIVERVIEW -- People who live along the U.S. 301 corridor between Gibsonton Drive and State Road 672 just south of Riverview say it often takes them longer to get between those two points than it does to drive to Tampa on Interstate-75.

It’s only six miles, but sometimes, especially during rush hours in both the morning and evening as people pour into the new back-to-back developments, it can take 30 minutes or more, and if there’s an accident -- which there often is -- much longer.

There’s lots of activity on U.S. 301 between Gibsonton Drive and State Road 672 just south of Riverview as the Florida Department of Transportation widens the crowded road from two to six lanes with raised medians. The department wanted to go all the way to State Road 674 in Sun City Center but the southern portion could not be funded. Penny Fletcher Photo

When checking the mileage between the two points on a Wednesday afternoon at 1 p.m., an historically slow traffic hour according to county transportation officials, it took me almost 45 minutes to make the 12-mile round-trip.

The two-lane highway worked just fine when the Gibsonton/Boyette intersection and the Big Bend intersections with U.S. 301 weren’t anything more than a four-point country crossroads. But with so much major development, begin­ning with Summerfield Crossings in the mid-1980s and continuing today on both sides of the highway, the traffic in that area is worse than in most major cities along the Gulf Coast.

In fact, the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office cites those two intersections as having two of the highest accident rates in the ­county.

But residents are about to get relief thanks to a major project in progress since November by the Florida Department of Transportation.

We’ll all be glad when it finally starts to make a difference. Right now, the traffic is even slower than usual due to construction that ­often causes one-lane traffic, as road workers hold back lines of vehicles while northbound traffic goes through, and then southbound traffic, or vice versa.

But portions of the highway are completed between Gibsonton Drive and Symmes Road and ­drivers can feel the difference the widening has already made.
FDOT’s plan is to work from south to north now that the two major intersections are almost completed.

The $61 million dollar project is anticipated to take about 3 more years, said FDOT spokeswoman Kris Carson. “The project not only will take the roadway from two lanes to six, it includes building a new five-foot sidewalk on the west side of the road, a 12-foot multi-use path on the east side, new street lighting on both sides of the road and dividing the highway with raised medians,” Carson said.

The contractor, Prince Contracting, is clearing the right-of-way, installing new drainage and water pipes, building new ponds, constructing the new multi-use path as well as constructing the new northbound roadway. This part of the project is expected to take about 2 years.

Once the work is done on the east side, traffic will be switched to the new lanes and the contractor will work on the west side of U.S. 301 rebuilding the southbound roadway, completing the drainage work and constructing that ­sidewalk.

The new lanes are designed to handle the bulk of traffic pouring from Rhodine Road and ­Panther Trace Boulevard as well as ­Gibsonton Drive and Big Bend, Carson said.




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