Commuters Riding High

The new elevated lanes of the Lee Roy Selmon Expressway opened Tuesday, promising a shorter commute to downtown Tampa from the Brandon area.

PAUL LAMISON / WFLA

By RICH SHOPES The Tampa Tribune

Published: Jul 19, 2006

The best part about driving the new elevated lanes of the Lee Roy Selmon Expressway became clear six minutes into my trip: I could see traffic on the lower lanes backed up at the tolls. On the elevated lanes, traffic zipped smoothly along.

In its debut Tuesday morning, the expressway's $420-million elevated highway lived up to the hype.

Traffic was light - which is bound to change as more people learn about it - and my trip from Brandon to downtown Tampa at 7:10 a.m. took just 10 minutes. I didn't hit the brakes until I neared the exit at Meridian Avenue. A beep was all that reminded me that I had paid a toll as I passed under an overhead bank of SunPass sensors at 60 mph.

Police stationed near U.S. 301 (yes, even on the elevated lanes there are places they can hide) kept speeding to a minimum. Traffic was dispersed among the three lanes and remained light even at the downtown exit.

To check the difference between the upper and lower lanes, I looped back to Brandon Parkway and Town Center Boulevard, the expressway's easternmost entrance, and at 7:45 a.m. began the same trip into downtown, this time taking the lower lanes. The entire trip, including a backup at the toll booth, took about 20 minutes.

Earlier, well before dawn, cars began lining up at the entrance at Brandon Parkway. The occasion was celebratory as reporters interviewed expressway officials and commuters. Slightly after 6, engineers switched the traffic light to green above Brandon Parkway. Several dozen commuters pulled onto the expressway, some honking and yelling as they pulled away.

A few minutes later, police issued the first speeding ticket.

There's a tendency on empty, wide-open highways to forget about speed limits. But at a rolling stretch near U.S. 301, four patrol cars were waiting, coming into view just after traffic crossed a rise in the road.

I hit the cruise control and kept it at 60 mph the rest of the way.

Ralph Mervine, the expressway authority's interim executive director, said about 2,000 cars used the elevated highway Tuesday morning.

He expects that number to hit 6,000 by September, or roughly half of the current daily total for expressway drivers.

The reversible lanes won't be open to eastbound afternoon traffic until late August, after TransCore, the company that installed the SunPass sensors, finishes testing them in that direction.

The authority got permission on Friday to open westbound travel from Florida Turnpike Enterprise, which oversees the state's 450 miles of toll roads. Rather than waiting until August, as initially planned, the authority opted for an earlier "soft opening."

"If something is ready for the public to use, I think the public should be able to use it," Mervine said.

The public has been waiting for four years.

More than two years ago, a section of the unfinished span collapsed when a support column sank 11 feet into the soft earth. Concrete chunks the size of baseballs plummeted to the ground.

Engineers discovered another column had sunk 1.3 inches and then found that most of the pillars, 154 of them, had to be reinforced after being planted in ground that was too soft.

The changes set back the project a year and added nearly $100 million to the original $320 million price. Who will pay for the mistakes is still being decided in the courts.

All of that seemed like ancient history Tuesday.

"Awesome," Aida Gonzalez of Valrico said after exiting the highway at Meridian Avenue and Twiggs Street. "Oh my God! It took like 10 minutes or so."

Elaine Cook said her first trip on the one-way highway was "fun" but "a little bit scary."

"I didn't want to be the first one on the news to go off the side," Cook said. "But it was nice looking down at all the people bumper-to-bumper into Tampa on the crosstown."

"I loved it," said Susan Hinson of Brandon. "There wasn't any traffic whatsoever, and you could see the other lanes down below backed up."

For the next few weeks, the elevated lanes will open to westbound traffic from 6 to 10 a.m. only. The cost is $1, and only SunPass users can drive the road. To keep traffic flowing, no large trucks are permitted.

In late August, eastbound travel will be permitted from 3 p.m until early the next morning.

The Expressway Authority calls the elevated road "express lanes" and the lower road "local lanes."

Of course, like Malfunction Junction and the Howard Frankenstein Bridge, drivers often create their own names. E-mail your nickname suggestions to me for the new elevated expressway lanes. Please leave your name and phone number.

Reporter Mike Salinero contributed to this column. Columnist Rich Shopes can be reached at (813) 259-7633 or rshopes@tampatrib.com. Look for his Behind The Wheel column every Monday.