Where should roads go, and how big do they need to be.
Those are the questions Osceola County planners are asking themselves, based on the incredible growth occurring here, especially east and south of Lake Tohopekaliga.
The answers, they hope, come from the Southeast Area Transportation Study (SEATS).
The county is working with 12 major developers to improve transportation. Those developers are working as part of a Transportation Collaboration Agreement, which will ultimately address the impacts their work makes to the transportation network.
The study includes the areas east and south of Lake Toho — where major projects are planned — the Alligator Chain of Lakes Mixed-Use Conceptual Master Plan areas, as well as the surrounding communities.
County transportation planner Joshua DeVries delivered the finer points of the study to county commissioners at last week’s meeting, hoping to make all parties involved understand roadway improvement priorities for the next 20 years.
The goal of the SEATS study, he said, is to evaluate the transportation network through 2045, the timing and phasing of needed improvements in five-year increments, which will help more accurately identify the number of traffic lanes that will be needed within the roadway system over time.
For example, SEATS projected a series of roads expected to be built in the Kissimmee Park Road area ahead of and during the build of the Edgewater and Whaley developments will need four lanes by 2035, based on the projected traffic volume those developments will contribute. The same study projects Florida’s Turnpike will need eight lanes from north of Osceola Parkway to Nolte Road, where FDOT plans to move and expand the interchange now at Kissimmee Park Road.
“As this area grows, careful planning and coordination need to occur between Osceola County and the city of St. Cloud,” DeVries said. “In 2014, both the county and city signed an interlocal agreement approving the joint planning area to outline how different levels of governance are coordinated, including annexation and how transportation can be coordinated between the county and city.”
A community open house was held on March 22, and DeVries said the loudest concerns were questions about why such growth is being allowed and whether there should be a moratorium on new development. Road questions centered around prioritizing the planned Turnpike expansion, about funding for new feeder roads, whether property owners would be displaced by new roads and how to maintain the serenity and esthetics of the area.
The next step for this information is to take those public comments and finalize that SEATS analysis into a presentation to be given to the St. Cloud City Council in May.
Upon hearing the information last week, Commissioner Ricky Booth, whose district 5 contains much of the future proposed growth, asked if there’s a way to identify some of these roads “desperately needed yesterday” and get them built faster, such as those around Neptune Road and Old Canoe Creek Road.
DeVries’ response was that the county is looking for a function of how to accommodate that, and that the most likely way would be to build some of the roads that would eventually need to be four lanes quickly as two-lane roads to open more access and capacity, and then widen them to four lanes later.
