Road Rage

If you drive in Southwest Florida, you know what it's like: You can be cruising along I-75, trying to stay out of the way of the speedster tailgating the road hog in the passing lane, when parallel streams of red suddenly light up ahead of you. You hit the brakes, with one eye in the rearview mirror and a prayer on your lips that the dump truck or SUV behind you stops before it rear-ends you.

Another white-knuckle moment.

Such moments have become a way of life here, especially in the winter, when tourists and snowbirds merge with the exploding population of residents. The number of wrecks-some minor, some deadly-shoots up along with blood pressure, road rage, and wasted time and fuel.

When you're trapped in accordion traffic on I-75 or parked on U.S. 41 waiting for a wreck to be cleared, it's easy to believe that traffic is worse here than in most places. But experts scoff at that idea. In 2002, the Texas Transportation Institute, which studied 85 metropolitan areas around the country, found that drivers in the Fort Myers/Cape Coral area suffered only a third of the traffic delays common in most cities that size. And according to a recent census report, the average daily commute to work in Lee County was 25.6 minutes, just a minute more than the national average of 24.3 minutes. (It's likely that commute times in Collier are even less, since more Lee residents probably commute to Collier than the other way around.)

"I lived in D.C. for 10 years, so I don't see any traffic issues in Lee County at all," says Michael Reitmann, executive vice president of Lee Building Industry Association.

In fact, says Florida Gulf Coast Group president Janet Watermeier, a member of the Florida Transportation Commission and former director of Lee County's economic development office, in a survey a few years ago most people said that traffic wasn't a major problem, probably because so many came from areas where it was much worse.

"Traffic is one of those things where perception really is important," says John Kaliski, of Massachusetts-based Cambridge Systematics, a consulting firm for Florida's Department of Transportation. "Compared to some of the larger cities in country, the level of congestion and delay [in Southwest Florida] is lower. But it's been growing quickly, and the seasonal swing is much bigger than other parts of the country, so at times it feels pretty severe because parts of the year it is."

Long gone is the Southwest Florida that Naples Transportation and Tours Inc. chauffeur Joe Marinelli found when he moved to Naples in 1984. Southwest Florida International Airport had just opened, and I-75 between Tampa and Miami was almost finished.

"Back then, in the summertime, you could lie down on U.S. 41 and take a nap," he says with a laugh. Now he can drive late at night from the airport to Marco Island in 53 minutes. But during the day, it can take close to an hour and a half-or more, if he encounters an accident.

"Driving has gotten to be a nightmare," he says. "Originally, you had Naples, Fort Myers and Port Charlotte, and there was nothing between them. We woke up one day and found we've got this new city called 'Southwest Florida' that runs from Marco Island about 75 miles north and south, and 20 miles east and west, and the population is over a million people."

No One in the Driver's Seat

Cross-town traffic in our "new city" has road builders racing to keep up. Massive population growth compounded by years of shortages in funding-and political fortitude-has driven the region into a traffic jam. Although Lee County has worked to address its transportation problems, inertia in Collier County has created a notorious situation.

"It was a massive failure of vision by our county commission back in the '90s," says Joe Cox, a Naples attorney who's lived in the region for 30 years.

County transportation administrator Norman Feder agrees. "In Collier County, we disproved the theory that if you don't build it, they won't come," he says. "In the late '90s for about five years, we were growing rapidly and didn't build any new capacity, and that put us into a backlog." But over the past five years, Collier County has been pursuing a "very, very aggressive construction program," he adds, paid in part by the highest impact fees in the state.

The failure to plan for a traffic surge goes beyond the local level, says Cox, pointing out that state and federal elected officials made no attempts to raise transportation dollars. "We're a big, powerful state with a large congressional delegation, and we rank in the bottom half in about every appropriation," he says. "It wasn't pursued with the diligence it should have been."

That's why the public-private Southwest Florida Transportation Initiative (SWFTI) was formed seven years ago. Much-needed improvements to U.S. 41 were planned, but no one was doing much to secure funding for them. Lobbyists can make sure projects get priority with legislators who approve funding. "Sometimes we can help county DOTs by asking things of the state that they can't," says SWFTI spokesperson Tina Matte. "They can't ask a legislator to write that piece of legislation, but we can."

SWFTI has since helped the region secure "well over a billion dollars" in transportation funds for various roads, says Matte, including $72 million in federal funds for I-75 that Congress was expected to approve in its most recent session.

But even that funding won't be enough. Although six-laning the interstate is slated to begin in 2007-'08 fiscal year and finish in 2010-'11, "the day it opens, we'll need eight lanes," says Matte. "Conditions will be just as bad when the six lanes open."

SWFTI wants the state to approve an expressway authority, which could lead to toll lanes on the interstate to pay for further widening to 10 lanes.

Slow Through-Traffic

Investment in transportation is a national problem, says Kaliski. "It's a bigger issue for Florida because of the growth, and even bigger for Southwest Florida because it's growing more quickly than the rest of the state."

Yet for years, state and federal transportation dollars went where lobbying pressure was more intense: interstates 4 and 95. Meanwhile, I-75 filled to overflowing. Not only does I-75 serve through-traffic-including a growing volume of freight from the region's agricultural industry and ever-growing demand for consumer goods-it's a primary roadway for locals. "I-75 serves almost as a main street for the region," says Kaliski.

"It is usual to travel I-75 and find yourself slowed to 20 or 30 mph in areas-if not momentarily stopped-at some point during the day," says Florida Department of Transportation spokesperson Debbie Tower. She blames not only the sheer volume of traffic, but poor driving.

"Law enforcement tells us 99 percent of crashes result from driver error. On the interstate, when someone traveling 80 mph is riding on the bumper of the car in front, there is literally no reaction time. We see this routinely," says Tower. Drivers all over the region can regularly be seen tailgating, failing to use turn signals, disobeying the speed limit, running red lights-which Tower calls "epidemic"-and blocking the passing lane.

Of course, congestion probably plays a role in making drivers more impatient, and mistakes are more likely to lead to accidents on crowded roads. But whether it's bad drivers or bad traffic, the results are the same. "A lot of the traffic problems we have result from crashes," says Tower. "Some of them are just fender-benders, but it doesn't matter. We're still delayed by an hour or two."

Paying for Paving

From design and right-of-way acquisition to permitting and construction, roads take years to build, and they aren't cheap. In Collier County, the price tag for one mile of two-lane road is $7 million and rising, as material and land costs soar. And as development increases, it gets more complicated to acquire land for roads. "You have fewer places to purchase right-of-way without condemning homes or buildings," says Watermeier. That involves more costs and requires reaching an agreement with those affected.

And though Florida actually has budgeted "a significant amount of money for transportation," she says, those funds pale before the needs. Just to maintain the current inadequate conditions, Florida faces an annual shortfall of $2.7 billion through 2020, according to a state DOT report; to actually improve conditions, it would take $4.9 billion more per year than the state has budgeted.

As a result, the state has shifted its strategy. It now funds projects only in what it calls a Strategic Intermodal System, made up of the primary transportation routes and modes that link regions within the state and link Florida to other states. In Lee and Collier counties, besides Southwest Florida International Airport, the SIS list includes I-75 and State Road 80-an east-west alternative to Alligator Alley. State roads 82 and 29 are on the "emerging" list, meaning they'll be getting more attention in the future.

The new SIS strategy, however, has diverted money from other state roads that serve local drivers, which means counties have to fund those improvements even as they struggle to build new roads. Both Lee and Collier counties are trying to build north-south alternatives that could help relieve pressure on I-75, such as linking and improving Livingston Road, Imperial Street and Three Oaks Parkway. That project cost Collier $66.5 million and is estimated at $120 million for the sections in Lee County.