I know people believe the Southport Connector will be a positive addition for Poinciana, but as currently designed it will actually make traffic conditions worse.
The goal of the Southport Connector is to complete a section of the outer beltway to encourage traffic that wants to go to the Turnpike south and avoid Interstate 4 in downtown Orlando. There is no aspect of this project that is going to improve traffic conditions in Poinciana. Instead the road will:
• Permanently lock Poinciana local lanes to only two lanes in each direction with no chance to ever increase the number of local lanes through town center.
• Slow traffic through town center as lights will need to be longer to allow traffic to cross under an elevated highway. This is due to the substantially wider/longer intersections that the underpasses create. These intersections will have less peak volume capacity than today, which may lengthen local drive times.
• Create yet a larger traffic jam at the intersection of Poinciana Boulevard and Pleasant Hill Road as local traffic that chose to pay the toll for the elevated expressway try to get off the expressway and enter local lanes to go up either Poinciana or Pleasant Hill to get to work. Even CFX’s own traffic projections show only 4,000 Poinciana cars will use the Southport Connector to the Turnpike, while 41,000 cars will use Poinciana or Pleasant Hill.
• If you take the proposed Southport Connector tollway to the Florida Turnpike to travel north instead of using Pleasant Hill to avoid traffic and you drive north from the intersection of Marigold and Cypress Parkway to Osceola Parkway in Kissimmee, the Southport and Turnpike total drive distance will be 28 miles. Driving up Pleasant Hill north to Osceola Parkway by comparison is 16.5 miles.
• It’s not clear what the total toll will be for this one-way trip north via the Southport. The tolls charged by the Central Florida Expressway Authority average about $.14/ mile but the Poinciana Parkway is an outlier at $.36/mile for its 7.2 mile length. Therefore, the one-way toll should be somewhere between $3.92 and $10 but likely closer to the lower number. For a daily commuter, that is a toll cost of $2,000/year to $5,000/year but will likely be closer to the $2,000. Will Poinciana drivers pay more than $2000/year and drive the extra 6,000 miles/ year on the toll road to avoid traffic on Pleasant Hill?
Here’s a solution: If the Southport was redirected along either side of the wetland corridor following Poinciana Boulevard, all these negative impacts to Downtown Poinciana and local traffic could be avoided. Cypress Parkway would then have plenty of right-of-way space to expand to a 6 lane road through downtown Poinciana from a 4 lane road for a 50 percent improvement in peak traffic capacity, which would greatly reduce congestion.
Several alternate Southport routes were analyzed but it was decided to be easier to run it through the center of Poinciana. The significant negative local impacts to Poinciana weren’t well represented and taken into consideration as an important deciding factor. Being an unincorporated area, Poinciana does not have the organization and power that a city would have to represent itself well when major governmental infrastructure projects come under public review.
Epstein is the chairman of the Poinciana Community Development District and has served on Planning and Zoning Committees/Commissions in five states including as a commissioner on the Polk County Planning Commission. An author, she has 45 published titles.
