INSIDE: - Florida's Turnpike

Did you know
that worker
productivity is
lowered by bad
commutes?
The Surface Transportation Policy
Project 1 reports that employees who
have no choice but to battle their way
through congestion every day are
less productive and more likely to
change jobs. Each year, businesses
across the country are paying tens
of billions of dollars extra in absenteeism,
excess parking, medical care, employee
benefits, turnover, and lowered
productivity expense.
The productivity costs of bad commutes
can be substantial. In 1995, the most
recent data available on total drive
time, the average American spent 443
hours behind the wheel of a car, or 55
eight-hour workdays.
In a study of 68 cities, the Texas
Transportation Institute (TTI) estimated
that the total congestion "bill" for
the areas studied in 1999 came to
$78 billion, which was the value of
4.5 billion hours of delay and 6.8 billion
gallons of excess fuel consumed.
1 The Surface Transportation Policy Project is
a diverse, nationwide non-profit coalition
working to ensure safer communities and smarter
transportation choices that enhance the economy,
improve public health, promote social equity, and
protect the environment. More information on
this coalition can be found at www.transact.org.
“Smart Highways” Arterial Road Signs
A newly installed Dynamic Message Sign (DMS) on
Glades Road in Boca Raton, Palm Beach County.
This sign is just one of 36 that have recently
been installed on arterial roads that lead to
the Turnpike. Motorists will be forewarned of
accidents or congestion on Florida’s Turnpike,
in turn allowing them to choose alternate
travel routes.
An arterial road DMS on Kendall Drive in Miami-Dade County.
By early 2009, 115 dynamic message signs
will be in operation system wide, with more
planned, allowing Turnpike staff to manage
traffic more efficiently and providing Turnpike
customers notification of traffic conditions in
a timely manner.
Installation of an arterial DMS sign on State Road 50 in
Orange County.
It is documented in numerous studies that over 500 million hours per year are wasted in traffic
jams in Florida alone. Dynamic Message Signs will help reduce the time Turnpike customers
wait in traffic, and in some cases, will help them avoid the delay completely.
P.O. Box 9828, Ft. Lauderdale, FL 33310-9828
Turnpike Headquarters 407-532-3999
Jim Ely
Executive Director
Jennifer Olson, P.E.
Deputy Executive Director
William Sloup, P.E.
Director, Planning and Production
William Thorp, C.P.A.
Chief Financial Officer
Mark Beall
Director, Business Development and Concession Management
Richard Nelson
Director, Toll Operations
Kenneth D. Morgan, P.E.
Materials and Research Engineer
Turnpike Operations Center 954-975-4855
Kimberlee Poulton
Director, Communications and Marketing
Paul Wai, P.E.
Director, Highway Operations
Bill Sears, P.E.
Interim Construction Engineer
Jose Quintana, P.E.
Maintenance Engineer
John Easterling, P.E.
Traffic Operations Engineer
Santiago Alvarez
Facilities and Telecommunications Administrator
What is Florida’s Turnpike?
Florida’s Turnpike Enterprise is part of
the Florida Department of Transportation,
overseeing a 460-mile system of limitedaccess
toll highways. Its Main Street, or
Turnpike mainline, passes through 11
counties from Florida City in Miami-Dade
County to a junction with Interstate 75 in
North Central Florida.
In addition to the 312-mile mainline, the Turnpike
system includes the 23-mile Sawgrass Expressway/
Toll 869 in Broward County; the 19-mile Seminole
Expressway/Toll 417 in Seminole County; an eightmile
portion of the Martin Andersen Beachline
Expressway/Toll 528 in Orlando; the six-mile
Southern Connector Extension of the Central Florida
GreeneWay/Toll 417 in Orlando; the 25-mile Polk
Parkway/Toll 570 in Lakeland; the 57-mile Veterans
Expressway-Suncoast Parkway/Toll 589 in West
Central Florida; and the 11-mile Daniel Webster
Western Beltway/Toll 429 in Orange County.
The original 110-mile stretch of Turnpike from Golden
Glades to Fort Pierce opened in 1957 as the Sunshine
State Parkway, under the direction of the former
Florida State Turnpike Authority. Florida’s Turnpike
is a user-financed facility whose toll revenue
pays for new construction and maintenance of the
entire system.
PRSRT STD
US Postage
Paid
Ft. Lauderdale, FL
Permit No. 3873
INSIDE:
Palm Beach County Widening
Project Completed
Orange County Widening Project
Okeechobee Toll Plaza ORT
“Smart Highways” Project
Around Florida’s
Turnpike Enterprise
Turnpike Overpass at Atlantic
Avenue in Palm Beach County

Palm Beach County Widening Project Completed
In November of this past year the $81-million,
multi-faceted project to widen Florida’s
Turnpike from Delray Beach to Boynton Beach
in Palm Beach County was completed. The
final piece of this three-year project was the
Atlantic Avenue Interchange in Delray Beach.
The project came about as the volume of
traffic in the Palm Beach County corridor
had been doubling every seven years
with the advent of new communities and
the general rise in population. The traffic
volume analysis anticipated an even
faster pace of growth in the southern
portion of the county. This increase in
traffic volumes was also resulting in
considerable congestion and backups on
Atlantic Avenue, the arterial feeder road,
and on the ramps of the Atlantic Avenue
Interchange itself.
Paving the newly widened Atlantic Avenue under
the Turnpike.
The finalized construction project included:
• One additional travel lane in each
direction from south of the Atlantic
Avenue interchange to the Lantana Toll
Plaza seven miles to the north
• Conversion of a portion of the Lantana
Toll Plaza to open road tolling (ORT)
• Modification of the Atlantic Avenue
Interchange, including the widening of
Atlantic Avenue.
Construction started in 2005 and a little
over two years later, in late 2007, the interchange
modifications were completed.
New on- and off-ramps were built on the
west side of the Turnpike to service all
southbound traffic. The original tollbooths
and ramps on the east side service northbound
traffic.
The widening portion of the project was
also completed in late 2007, with the
exception of the Atlantic Avenue overpass.
The span of the overpass bridge still
needed to be widened to accommodate
the planned addition of one lane in each
direction. It also needed to be lengthened
to make room for the addition of lanes
beneath the bridge on Atlantic Avenue.
This work was completed in July of 2008
and the third northbound Turnpike lane
over Atlantic Avenue was opened.
The conversion of portions of the Lantana
Toll Plaza to accommodate open road
tolling (ORT) — paying tolls electronically
using a SunPass ® transponder without
high speed curtailments, such as gates and
tollbooths — was well underway. It was
clearly evident that as nearly 70 percent
of Turnpike travelers use a SunPass
transponder to pay their tolls — a
testament of their satisfaction with a
system that contributes to a faster and less
costly commute — the conversion would
provide another point of congestion relief.
The ORT lanes opened in April 2008.
Work continued on the widening of the
arterial feeder road to the Turnpike,
Atlantic Avenue, and the realignment of
traffic at the interchange. Landscaping
was replaced and more vegetation added
at the interchange. In November 2008,
the project was 100 percent complete.
The goal to relieve chronic congestion and
the bottleneck of traffic at rush hour was
achieved.
How fitting then that as this article was
being written, Secretary of Transportation
Stephanie C. Kopelousos unveiled DOT’s
new vision statement: Serving the people
of Florida by delivering a transportation
system that is fatality and congestion free.
The completion of this project is one step,
of many to come, to successfully deliver
this vision as a reality.
Painting the underside of the Atlantic Avenue overpass.
Orange County Widening
The Orange County Turnpike widening effort,
which has been ongoing in phases since
2005, has reached some critical milestones
in the race to meet the 2012 completion
date for the entire corridor. These widening
projects represent the first major changes to
the northern section of the Turnpike since its
construction in 1964.
The widening project from State Road
528 to Interstate 4 was completed in April
2008. Two projects are concurrently under
construction, one from Interstate 4 to State
Workmen preparing the Kirkman Road overpass
for expansion.
Signature gantry at the Okeechobee Toll Plaza
in Miami-Dade County.
The first open-road tolling SunPass “signature
gantry” on Florida’s Turnpike opened to traffic
September 22 at the Okeechobee mainline
toll plaza in Miami-Dade County, providing
traffic relief to the more than 60,000
SunPass customers who use the plaza on an
average day.
For now, only southbound motorists are
benefiting from the open-road tolling
configuration, which eliminated the tollbooths
and gates for vehicles with SunPass.
Open-road tolling is anticipated to open to
northbound traffic in the spring of 2009.
While similar to the open-road tolling
gantries that opened last year at the
Installation of six girders on the Kirkman Road bridge over the Turnpike.
Road 408, and one from State Road 408 to
Beulah Road. The additional project that
completes the widening in Orange County
to just north of State Road 50 begins in
January 2009.
The work underway from Exit 259 to north of
Exit 272 includes multiple bridge widening,
reconstruction, 8 through lanes, and
12 lanes in the heavily travelled route
between State Road 429 an State Road 408.
Bird Road and Homestead toll plazas in
Miami-Dade, the SunPass signature gantry
provides an additional advantage when
it comes to maintaining the toll collection
equipment. The gantry has a catwalk
that allows the technicians to service
the equipment without closing the travel
lanes below.
Currently, only two southbound SunPassonly
express lanes are open to traffic.
But eventually a third lane will open
beneath the SunPass gantry and the
current 40 mph speed limit will increase to
65 mph — the final highway speed on this
segment of the Turnpike.
Cash customers have five traditional
tollbooths available, which collect both
SunPass and cash tolls. The SunPassonly
express lanes are separated from the
cash/SunPass tollbooths by a concrete
wall. Cash-paying motorists must pull
off the highway, approximately one mile
north of the toll plaza, onto a ramp with
traditional tollbooths and then merge back
onto the travel lanes.
Many of the bridges north of the Turnpike’s
Turkey Lake Service Plaza were the original
bridges constructed in 1964. In all, three
overpasses, five pairs of Turnpike bridges
and the Ocoee exit ramp bridge are being
reconstructed, including modifications to
the Interstate 4 bridges and the Kirkman
Road overpass.
The $282 million widening program is
scheduled for completion in 2012.
Open Road Tolling Provides Relief at Okeechobee Toll Plaza
The construction project to convert the
Turnpike’s Okeechobee toll plaza into a
high-tech, open-road tolling plaza will
also add a new Turnpike interchange at
Northwest 74th Street. It is anticipated the
project will be completed in early 2010.
A technician accesses SunPass equipment from the
catwalk in the gantry.
Around Florida’s Turnpike Enterprise
I-95 Express in Miami-Dade County
The I-95 Express lanes began collecting variably priced tolls using SunPass transponders on December 5. The
nine-mile express lanes are in the northbound direction from SR 112/Airport Expressway to the Golden Glades
Interchange just south of the Broward County line.
South Florida Construction Career Days
In October, Turnpike employees participated in South
Florida Construction Career Days. This tri-county
three-day event, organized and sponsored by area
contracting companies, FDOT and the local school
systems, promotes the construction industry as a career
choice. During the event students were able to learn about
the various opportunities and to speak one-on-one with
individuals who could answer their specific questions
about the industry. Matt Price, Turnpike Construction
Engineering and Inspection Manager, met with
students to discuss their interests.
Polk Parkway SunPass Challenge
Construction crew replaced the existing sign canopies
at the South Florida Avenue eastbound off-ramp.
New sign canopies are part of the $3.2 million project
to add SunPass-only lanes at all exit and entrance
ramps on the 25-mile Polk Parkway. This project will
be complete in early spring 2009.
Sawgrass Expressway in Broward County
The Sawgrass Expressway Deerfield Beach toll plaza conversion to open road tolling (ORT) was opened to
westbound traffic under the signature gantry on the sixth of December. The opening of the eastbound ORT lanes
followed two weeks later, on December 19.
Editorial Staff
Pike’s Peek is published quarterly by
the Public Information Office of Florida’s
Turnpike Enterprise. Comments can be
directed to:
turnpike.pio@dot.state.fl.us
Kimberlee Poulton
Director, Communications and Marketing
Chad Huff
Editor
Laila A. Haddad
Sonyha Rodriguez-Miller
Associate Editors
Christa Deason
Nichole L. Kalil
Joe Chinelly
Contributors
Turnpike Public Information
1-800-749-7453
This toll-free line is staffed
24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
SunPass Information:
1-888-865-5352 (1-888-TOLL-FLA)
www.sunpass.com
Florida’s Turnpike Internet Address:
www.FloridasTurnpike.com