I-4, the expressway from ...Floridians

[JG]

After a difficult and costly rebuild of Interstate 4 from south Orlando to north of Altamonte Springs, the road is plagued with some of the nation’s worst traffic dysfunction along its tourism corridor.

Stop and go has a relentless grip on I-4 where it passes Walt Disney World in south Orange County.

Where the tolled State Road 528, or Beachline, T-bones into I-4 brings more grinding waste of time and fuel for commuters, tourists, service workers and cargo haulers.

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It happens daily, without a trigger such as an accident and lingers stubbornly after rush-hour headaches have dissipated on the region’s other major roads.

It’s a mess that the state transportation department, according to recent comments in Central Florida, will address in coming months with its fullest presentation yet on major remedies ahead.

“It’s a very large, massive project that is very needed,” said Catalina Chacon, a DOT supervisor for I-4.

Local leaders say they have no details about what may be disclosed by the state agency.

National ranking
But I-4′s deterioration has data points that were examined by the global traffic analytics and consulting company, INRIX. Its findings underscore what drivers suffer.

A dozen I-4 miles, extending from the Beachline to S.R. 429, hosts the worst congestion in all of Florida, according to INRIX’s study last year of 684 highway corridors in the U.S.

That stretch also stands, according to the company’s 2021 Traffic Scorecard, as the nation’s third worst.

I-4 has graduated into a notorious class, ranking just behind New York City’s Brooklyn–Queens Expressway and, in the top spot, Los Angeles’ Interstate 5, and beating out the toughest commutes in Dallas, Chicago, Seattle, Washington, D.C. and elsewhere.


I-4 is Central Florida’s busiest road, with an average of 100,000 to 200,000 vehicles daily depending on location, and a pillar of the region’s economy.

“It’s significantly more congested than it was pre-COVID,” said INRIX’s Bob Pishue of the 12-mile segment. Before the pandemic, traffic started to get bad by early afternoon, but now the sluggishness takes hold by noon. “There’s a longer congestion time,” he said.

By afternoon rush, the stretch between between S.R. 429 and Beachline is continuously and solidly slammed.

Florida’s quicker rebound to ugly traffic appears at play in another Central Florida road making INRIX’s list for worst congestion. In seventh place is the 3 miles along U.S. Highway 17, or John Young Parkway, from U.S. Highway 192, or Vine Street, through Kissimmee to Oaks Boulevard.

Fast-growing north Osceola County has dug a massive transportation hole by not keeping up with highway capacity.


Ranked eighth is a section of Interstate 95 in Miami-Dade County.

I-4 and U.S. 17 may slide down INRIX rankings when its 2022 report comes out late this year, Pishue said, depending on whether traffic in other states returns to levels of before the pandemic.

Even if that’s the case, the staggering rise and growth of subdivisions in the four corners area, where Lake, Orange, Osceola and Polk meet, will degrade I-4 traffic further, transportation officials have noted.

Critical corridor
I-4s fate and potential recovery rest in the hands of the Florida Department of Transportation.

“This is a critical corridor for you guys as well as for us,” said Chacon, DOT’s I-4 supervisor, speaking recently in one of many presentations to Central Florida officials. “We are doing as much as we can to advance it and get the funding to move forward to construction.”

But in the same presentations, DOT project manager Hatem Aquib said the large sums needed for I-4 upgrades have been unattainable.


“Some of these segments are hundreds of millions of dollars each,” Aquib said, while others “are over a billion dollars.”

Despite calls for dramatically scaling up public transportation, the state doubled down on I-4 as Central Florida’s transportation mainstay a decade ago.

Florida’s transportation department assembled financing and agreements that ceded significant responsibility to corporate interests for a “public-private partnership.”

In 2015, DOT and its contractors began construction in a project called I-4 Ultimate, which overhauled and added four toll lanes to 21 miles from west of Kirkman Road in Orange, through the heart of Orlando and to east of State Road 434 in Seminole County.

It was billed as amounting to 10 very large projects worth about $200 million each tackled simultaneously as the state’s priciest road job ever.

Most finished this year, I-4 Ultimate provided modern and generous interchanges, ramps and other roadway that have significantly eased traffic flows. But construction proved to be a slog at $100 million over its budgeted $2.3 billion, a year behind schedule, with a stunning five workers killed on the job and lawsuits among participants.

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After that massive endeavor, the state has pivoted to a far less aggressive piecemeal approach for I-4.

Beyond ultimate
Long before I-4 Ultimate’s completion, DOT launched a vaguely funded program called I-4 Beyond the Ultimate. It would fix congestion outside the I-4 Ultimate footprint: along 20 miles to the north in Seminole and Volusia counties and 20 miles to the south, a stretch that includes INRIX third-worst corridor.

Beyond the Ultimate’s projects so far have been tiny compared to I-4 Ultimate and some work has been temporary. But newly available federal money recently has upped ambitions.

Chacon and Aquib have made several appearances in recent weeks before committees of the MetroPlan Orlando, which, like dozens of other such agencies in Florida, coordinates with local and state governments to craft comprehensive, long range transportation strategies.

They reported that several projects are gaining traction for construction starts within a year and completion within several years, with federal stimulus funding from the American Rescue Plan Act playing a critical role.

They include remakes of interchanges with Sand Lake Road and with Apopka Vineland Road. Embedded in those projects is another undertaking, building a single toll lane westbound from the International Drive area to Walt Disney World area.


Chacon and Aquib said their agency is taking care to account for a proposed rail corridor for the local SunRail commuter train and the private Brightline Trains.

A prevailing goal in Central Florida is to build a shared rail corridor from Orlando International Airport to the Disney and south International Drive area. Additional corridor would be built from there to Tampa for Brightline’s service.

“Right now there is conversation about where rail is going to go along I-4,” Chacon said. “Is it in the median, is it on the east side, I don’t know.”

For now, funding prospects for the rail corridor along Interstate 4, including from federal infrastructure sources, appear more imminent and concrete than any that DOT has articulated for the clogged interstate.

That may change in a matter of months, according to Chacon’s repeated promises to MetroPlan groups.

“We feel very confident that by the end of this year or early next year, we will come back, give you an update on the overall, bigger picture, telling you what we are working on and what potential steps could move forward with the I-4 Beyond the Ultimate,” Chacon said.

Hmmm ...Chacon...Thats Cuban? Se?