OCALA, FL (352today.com) – Growth, aging infrastructure and capacity challenges to accommodate the denser volume of traffic are among the concerns that most directly impact commuters.
The Marion County Office of the County Engineer is working toward making things smoother, including a number of resurfacing projects to make life less bumpy. Flexibility and adaptability to making these plans progress in a timely fashion means adjusting to various timeframes so the project can be completed.
“We try to be as flexible as we can with our contractors on the resurfacing projects,” said Steven Cohoon, Marion County engineer. “There are certain areas that we want to restrict as to when they can work as an example. 484 at peak season, I don’t want a contractor out there working in the middle of the day. We do try to do that, but at the same time, if we give enough flexibility to our contractors where we can and when we can, those calls come down. That gives the county relief, our taxpayers dollars go further as well. So, it’s a little bit of a balancing act with all of those different scenarios. For us to fix the roads sometimes, it’s a little bit of an inconvenience for a short amount of time. We try to limit that for everybody.”
Banyan Road ExtensionÂ
One of those projects that has been talked about in southeastern Marion County is the Banyan Road Extension. Part of the reason it hasn’t moved forward is the series of challenges making it a difficult feat for the work itself to get accomplished, said Cohoon. This includes coordinating with another jurisdiction, like the Florida Department of Environmental Protection.
“They have certain interests, the (Marjorie Harris Carr Cross Florida) Greenway has certain interests, and any time you talk about putting a new road through the Greenway, it causes a lot of pause from a lot of different people, and rightfully so,” said Cohoon. “This type of project, you have to jump through quite a few hoops, and the process is very long.”
The area where the proposed project would go has an interesting history and may play a role in whether or not the project goes forward in the future. It’s far from guaranteed, with a number of variables having to be factored into the equation.
“A lot of it is going to go back to, one, would the Greenway Authority allow us to do that? Some things I believe are in our interests,” said Cohoon. “This used to be hayfields. I have images from the ’80s or maybe a little bit earlier than the ’80s that show this was a hayfield. As the Shores got developed and platted, I have some later imagery as well, that shows there was a passing of some thoroughfare through the Greenway, all predating the Greenway adoption by the legislature. That doesn’t mean that we have the automatic right to go in there, but it does help support that there was a passing here at some time to help support that there isn’t an ecological significant stand of timber or something else because this was 60 years ago and it was nothing more than a hayfield. It doesn’t diminish the importance of it today, but it helps to support some of our case.”
The project will go to what’s referred to as the ARC board, the Acquisition and Restoration Council (under the aegis of the Florida Department of Environmental Protection). The county has some paperwork to fill out. The ARC board would then consider whether or not they would allow something like this to happen based on the evidence, said Cohoon.
“If it is a thumbs up, that helps to move forward the design and the construction, even then, they can require certain things, maybe they require it to be elevated, not to impact the trail system that’s there,” said Cohoon. “Maybe they require tunnels in certain areas. These are all things they can say, we will allow it, but here are some of constraints that you need to address. Then we go back and look at the benefit cost of everything, does it make sense, if all the things say yes, we can move forward. If anything is starting to make it a little bit more questionable than we pause and won’t pull the trigger potentially.”
SE 92nd Loop and SE 92nd Place Road and Baseline
The county has seen several different traffic studies identifying a background failure, so moving forward into the out years based on the traffic patterns in the county, and some of the growth that has taken place, there’s going to be a need to improve certain sections of this corridor, specifically that intersection (where the new 7-11 is on Baseline)Â and west all the way to 441, said Cohoon.
“We know these things are going to happen in the future, just based on regional growth,” said Cohoon. “People from Lake County coming through, people in Marion County, Belleview, the way that the network is being used and then some other approved development throughout the area as well. This is a good example of early planning doing what it should be doing. Today, you drive that road, you say, there’s nothing wrong here, what are you talking about. But when you look at the numbers and what it projected, and what could happen, and what it allowed to happen, we see that there’s going to be issues and getting to it before it becomes a problem is what we’re doing today.”
The county is proposing a study on Baseline, all the way to west of 441, and then an attempt to tie that loop back into SE 36th Ave, said Cohoon.
“That’s where the intersection of 95th is,” said Cohoon. “We’re talking about trying to tie something in there, creating this loop around Belleview, and trying to get some of the traffic off some of those arterials.”
The county will be looking at the different intersections and what capacity improvements are needed and the impact fees that are already generated from the developments that are coming in will be used toward the project, said Cohoon.
“We’re going to get fast with the study,” said Cohoon. “We’re going to move fast with the design and then try to get something constructed in our five-year TIP (Transportation Improvement Program) for these intersections as well as changing that two-lane road to a four-lane road. That’s the plan and getting ahead of it before it’s felt is what we’re trying to do, specifically for 92nd, if you look at 25 between 42 and the end of Maricamp, another example of paying attention to our other roads. We actually have a resurfacing project right now on 25 that’s going to be north of 42, and it’s going to go all the way up to the north end of the lake. That section of road needs some attention.”