No longer.
If you want to be added, please FReepMail me.
Posted on 04/01/2022 12:05:03 AM PDT by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
The toll lanes for Florida’s I-4 Ultimate, a seven-year, $2.4 billion project, are now open, with 21 miles of rebuilt highway and new express lanes between Orange and Seminole counties.
It is the largest road project in state history.
Highlights of the project:
Reconstruction of I-4 lanes and adding four new tolled I-4 Express lanes – two in each direction; Reconstruction of 15 major interchanges; Replacement of 74 bridges, widening of 13 bridges, and adding 53 new bridges.
The I-4 Express lanes, the centerpiece of the project, are now open on the interstate’s center lanes and separated by concrete barriers. The Florida Department of Transportation says work is wrapping up on the overall projec
(Excerpt) Read more at equipmentworld.com ...
PING!
I would have thought that Florida’s Turnpike is the largest road project in Florida’s history? 😮
The interstate was a federal project so it doesn’t count!
I live here and can tell you that con$truction/repair on I-4 will never $top.
Sounds like WAY more than 2.4 Billion!
Just in time for summer’s $5 gas!
This, of course, means lots more real estate for some rather impressive smash-up accidents involving (deep breath):
tourists (especially foreigners renting vehicles who are not used to driving on US roads especially frantically busy ones)
senior citizens with cataracts and slow responses
illegals in rickety trucks & vans often towing trailers with equipment flopping around on them
tuners ie kids in relatively inexpensive vehicles made expensive through aftermarket parts who drive like it’s a video game
normal persons attempting to negotiate the slalom course
Somehow police & emergency services have been press-ganged into becoming the ‘accident reconstruction’ teams for insurance companies using your tax dollars instead of the insurers’ own funds. This means a tedious, pedantic multi-hour closure of a highway or multiple lanes while they mark and measure instead of doing what they should do: clear the damn roadway as quickly as possible.
The states own all highways, not the federal government. Even through federal dollars were involved, the states have to kick in a substantial share. And this project was planned and contracted by FDOT.
So yes, biggest state road project.
Disney did this!
It will never be “done.”
For similar business reasons, Orlando's real estate interests and Disney blocked various mass transit initiatives and used their influence over the local quasi-independent Expressway Authority to provide road service to development projects outside the urban core. The result was many fortunes from real estate development -- and local governments now ravenously hungry for ever more cash to deal with road and infrastructure backlogs to service those far flung developments.
No longer.
thank God i live in the wilderness of suwannee county...
I-4 is a mess! Yes, I do miss all of the groves along it!
Florida Farmer
USDA shipping point report 3/30/22
Broken down by price per pound paid to the farmer.
If your grocer has any of these items and they are not from USA complain to your store manager.
Beans .49 per lb
Eggplant .78 Per lb
Florida Cucumbers .49 per lbs
Bell pepper 1.05 per lb
Zucchini. .56 per lb
Yellow Squash. .99 per lb
Tomato .56 per lb
Cabbage .21 per lb
Strawberries 1.62 per 1lb pack
https://www.ams.usda.gov/mnreports/or_fv120.txt
The Mouse is hungry today!
Severe frosts and citrus diseases and pests killed off most of the orange groves in the central region of Florida. Anti-pollution regulations also suddenly barred the use of smudge pots and bonfires to warms the groves on lethally cold nights. In my youth, the sweet fragrance of orange tree blossoms in the spring required smoke from such fires in the groves on cold still nights in winter.
A fascinating article with insightful comments.
A roadgeek wishes to say “thank you” :-) And the photos on aaroads.com of I 4 are just great. The road looks just spectacular!
But I had no clue that frost was such a problem for agriculture in Central Florida.
One leans a new fact every day here on FR - and that does me a world of good :-)
Severe cold winters in Florida are just frequent enough to devastate citrus in the middle of the state every few decades. Back in the mid-60s, I was visiting family friends as a boy and saw how an untimely hard freeze had shattered the trunks of citrus trees on the exposed crest of a hill. That firmly disabused me of boyhood romantic notions of a life of ease and security as a citrus grove owner. The paradox is that some cold weather -- just enough at the right time -- helps to set citrus fruit toward sweet maturity.
Severe cold winters in Florida are just frequent enough to devastate citrus in the middle of the state every few decades. Back in the mid-60s, I was visiting family friends as a boy and saw how an untimely hard freeze had shattered the trunks of citrus trees on the exposed crest of a hill. That firmly disabused me of boyhood romantic notions of a life of ease and security as a citrus grove owner. The paradox is that some cold weather -- just enough at the right time -- helps to set citrus fruit toward sweet maturity.
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