Interchange improvements underway

EAST COUNTY — The diamond interchange at I-75/University Parkway is just one piece of the transportation puzzle that Florida Department of Transportation officials are working to fix in Manatee and Sarasota counties to ease growing traffic congestion.

The Interstate 75 and State Road 70 interchange will see some improvements, too, as part of an $8.1 million design project featuring one of eight interchanges FDOT is designing for future improvements in Sarasota and Manatee counties.

FDOT is beginning its second phase of planning improvements to the Interstate 75 and State Road 70 intersection.

The current partial clover leaf configuration will be modified to a modified diamond interchange design with a single loop in the northwest quadrant. FDOT will replace entrance and exit ramps and add emergency stopping sites on the exit ramps.

Project Engineer Amy Setchell said the project is 60% designed — a feat that typically marks the midpoint for design. She presented members of the Sarasota-Manatee Metropolitan Planning Organization with project updates Sept. 15.

“It’s not a diverging diamond in any shape or form,” she said in reference to FDOT’s plans to improve the University Parkway/I-75 interchange. “It’s the same footprint as what’s out there today (except for the northwest quadrant).”

The overall project will expand I-75 to an eight-lane highway with three through lanes and an auxiliary lane in each direction. FDOT will rebuild the I-75 bridge over S.R. 70 and widen the I-75 bridges over Foley Creek and at the Braden River.

“A lot of our traffic goes from interchange to interchange,” Stublen said. “These auxiliary lanes go from interchange to interchange. If you get on the interstate at one interchange and you want to go to the next one, you don’t have to go out onto the flow of traffic (if you stay in the auxiliary lane). People traveling I-75 who want to get off merge like normal traffic would merge to get off at a ramp.”

To accommodate interchange improvements, FDOT also would widen about 1.15 miles of State Road 70 from east of Tara Boulevard to west of 87th Street.

FDOT spokesman Robin Stublen said the project sets up the interchange for what FDOT calls the ultimate I-75 alignment — two express lanes, three general use lanes and an auxiliary lane in each direction — on the nearly 7-mile stretch between University Parkway and S.R. 64.

Public workshops on the project will begin in spring 2015, Stublen said.

Stublen said design of the I-75/S.R. 70 project is fully funded and no right-of-way acquisition is required.

However, project construction is not yet funded. Design work should be complete in spring 2016.

FDOT is already past the midpoint for design on a double diverging diamond interchange at I-75/University Parkway — a design that also is slated for I-75’s intersections with Clark and Fruitville roads. Preliminary designs have begun on those projects, as well.

For more information, visit www.i75manatee.com.

Contact Pam Eubanks at [email protected].