INSIDE: - Florida's Turnpike

If you are in an
accident, who will
call your loved ones?
If you were in a serious motor vehicle
accident or had a medical emergency
that left you unable to tell anyone how
to get in touch with your family, what
would happen? How would they know
where you were? How would emergency
personnel learn of your medical condition?
There are two things you can do to
expedite communication between
emergency responders and your next of kin.
And the time to take these steps is now.
• I.C.E.= In Case of Emergency
Add a new contact named ICE in your cell
phone. List multiple emergency contacts
by adding ICE 1, ICE 2, ICE 3 etc.
The use of ICE is spreading throughout
North America and emergency personnel
are becoming accustomed to look for
that contact information.
• D.A.V.I.D. = Driver and Vehicle
Information Database
The Dept. of Highway and Safety Motor
Vehicles (DHSMV) has created a secure
database used by most law enforcement
agencies throughout Florida to locate
emergency contact information quickly.
Go to https://www6.hsmv.state.fl.us/
dlcheck/findcustomer to add your contact
information to this database.
09216| dv | 08
Open Road Tolling Project Wins Award
Turnpike Executive Director Jim Ely receives award for the
Bird Road and Homestead toll plaza ORT project during
the SASHTO conference held in Orlando in August.
The Bird Road and Homestead toll plaza
open road tolling project on the Turnpike’s
Homestead Extension was selected as regional
winner of America’s Transportation Award
in the On Time category at the annual Southeastern
Association of State Highway and
Transportation Officials (SASHTO) conference
held in Orlando during August.
The project was completed in record time, going from
concept to concrete in seven months and providing
open road tolling to our SunPass customers years
earlier than originally planned. Furthermore, the
project came in $2.4 million below the budget.
To put it in perspective, the typical open-road tolling
project utilizing the SunPass ‘signature gantry’ takes
an average of 18 months for construction alone.
The Bird Road and Homestead toll plazas are among
the Turnpike’s busiest with average daily traffic of
more than 120,000 vehicles at Bird Road and 67,000
at Homestead. This is why it was important to
provide the benefits of ORT to our SunPass customers
sooner rather than later. But the heavy traffic volumes
also made the project more difficult to construct.
The success of the project can be attributed to
innovative management and to the extraordinary
coordination, cooperation and sheer hard work
by all parties involved, which included the
Turnpike’s Production, Construction, Tolls and
Public Information departments; construction
management consultant Consul-tech Engineering;
toll equipment contractor Transcore; and the
design/build team of Jacobs Engineering and
Community Asphalt Corporation.
The Bird Road and Homestead ORT project, along
with nine other regional winners, will compete
for a National Grand Prize at the American
Association of State Highway and Transportation
Officials (AASHTO) Annual Meeting in October in
Hartford, Connecticut.
Demolition of the SunPass-only lanes at the Bird Road toll
plaza. Crews worked around the clock to demolish the
northbound lanes over the course of one weekend.
SunPass-only lanes at the Bird Road plaza were closed for only five days northbound and seven days southbound before
being reopened to ORT traffic.
What is Florida’s Turnpike?
Florida’s Turnpike Enterprise is part
of the Florida Department of
Transportation, overseeing a 460-mile
system of limited-access toll highways.
Its Main Street, or Turnpike
mainline, passes through 11 counties
from Homestead 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 eight-mile
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.
P.O. Box 9828, Ft. Lauderdale, FL 33310-9828
Turnpike Orlando 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 Ft. Lauderdale Office 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
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 userfinanced
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:
Beachline Widening Project
Sawgrass Expressway
Unveils New Electronic Signs
Tree Relocation Program
Open Road Tolling Project
Wins SASHTO Award
Around Florida's
Turnpike Enterprise
Pile Driving Operation on
the Beachline Expressway

Beachline, SR 528 Widening Project on Schedule Sawgrass Expressway Unveils New Dynamic Signs
Although ORT lanes opened to traffic in August, contractors continue work on the toll plaza conversion.
Demolition of the middle section of the plaza accommodated the new, at speed lanes. This $26 million
project is scheduled for completion in spring 2009.
The Martin Andersen Beachline Expressway
(formerly known as the Bee Line) is the
world­famous, 40­mile east­west limitedaccess
transportation corridor serving as the
main link between Central Florida’s tourism
hotspots and the Space Coast. The road is
owned and operated by Florida’s Turnpike
Enterprise, the Orlando­Orange County
Expressway Authority (OOCEA), and the
Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT).
Florida’s Turnpike Enterprise operates the
western-most eight miles as the Beachline
Expressway West, OOCEA operates from
Milepost 8 to Milepost 31, and FDOT
District 5 operates the eastern nine miles,
although the Turnpike provides toll collection
services on that section.
The Beachline West begins at Interstate 4
near the International Drive resort area. As
a result, traffic consists primarily of tourists
traveling to the various hotels, theme
parks and restaurants, as well as Orlando
International Airport. The road was originally
intended to connect the sleepy little citrus
town of Orlando with a quick, direct link to
the burgeoning aerospace industry at the
Cape. Unlike most other roads in the Turnpike
System, traffic on the Beachline doesn’t
ebb and flow during peak and off-peak
commuter times. Since the Beachline
maintains a steady stream of vehicles,
and congestion posed no threat for almost
three decades, no major changes or
improvements to the Beachline West were
done since this section of the roadway
opened in 1973.
That all changed after 2000, when growth
caught up in Central Florida. While Central
Floridians have embraced SunPass,
visitors and tour operators still represent
a large percentage of cash customers.
Therefore, lines in the cash lanes interfered
with the free movement of traffic in the
SunPass lanes. As a result, a $26 million
construction project to convert the
Beachline West barrier toll plaza to
open road tolling (ORT) is currently
underway. The project began last year, and
the ORT lanes opened to traffic in August
2008, providing some immediate congestion
relief along this heavily traveled route
during peak commuter hours.
Work continues on the conversion project,
which will be complete in the spring of 2009
The reconfigured plaza will feature two
SunPass-only express lanes in each direction,
with the capacity to add an additional lane
when the project to widen the Beachline to
three lanes in each direction is completed.
With the added ORT feature, SunPass
customers are able to travel at highway
speed in the express lanes. Included in
the toll plaza improvements is the
construction of four cash/SunPass lanes to
provide additional lanes for cash customers.
In June of this year, the Turnpike also
began a $49 million construction project to
widen the Beachline from the Turnpike
(Milepost 4.3) to McCoy Road. Improvements
include widening the existing bridge
structures at US 441, Landstreet Road, CSX
Railroad, CSX Railroad Taft Yard, Orange
Avenue and McCoy Road. A new bridge
also will be constructed for the access
ramp over the CSX Railroad. This project is
scheduled for completion in spring 2011.
DID YOU KNOW that the Martin Andersen
Beachline Expressway was named in honor
of the publisher of the Orlando Sentinel, an
early proponent of the project?
Workers oversee the pile driving operation at McCoy
Road. The new bridge is one of seven major bridges
that are part of the Beachline widening project
Above: The Sunrise Toll Plaza, with its signature gantry, under construction earlier this year is now completed. Right: Recently
installed Dynamic Message Signs installed over the cash lanes at the Sunrise Toll Plaza on the Sawgrass Expressway.
The Sunrise Toll Plaza on the Sawgrass
Expressway in Broward County unveiled
a new type of dynamic message sign, the
first of its kind on the Turnpike, in early
September and just in time to be put in use
with the threat of Hurricane Ike.
These full color dynamic message signs can
display both static and moving images. However,
The Village of Wellington in Palm Beach
County recently became the recipient
of 21 royal palm and multi­trunk veitchia
palm trees donated by Florida's Turnpike.
The need to relocate them arose as
Turnpike engineers began preparing
the site for modifications to the Lake
Worth Interchange.
they were specifically developed to direct traffic
through the cash lanes. Currently there are five
preset messages: a green "Change Provided", a
blue "Exact Change", a "SunPass Only", a "Lane
Closed", and a "No Tolls Use Caution".
It was this last preset message, "No Tolls-Use
Caution" that was displayed when tolls were
suspended as Hurricane Ike made its way towards
It is anticipated that more trees along Florida's
Turnpike will need to be relocated in the upcoming
months, specifically in the Lake Worth area. Large
royal palms, cabbage palms, live oaks and maple
trees will be made available to any municipality
and/or non-profit organizations on a first-come,
first-serve basis. The only requirement is that the
organization must remove, transport and replant
South Florida. During mandatory evacuation of
the Keys, tolls are suspended to help facilitate
uninterrupted flow of traffic.
Trees Relocated for Interchange Modification Project
A royal palm tree being removed for relocation by Village
of Wellington Public Works Department workers.
the trees. Nearly 450 trees have been relocated from
Turnpike property to neighboring municipalities
during the past three years. Most of the trees have
been in the palm family, but live oaks and native gumbo
limbos and bald cypress have also been donated.
Florida's Turnpike is actively seeking partners
interested in the Tree Relocation Program. Please
call 954-934-1280 for further information.
between the Turnpike and Sand Lake Road. Live oak trees being relocated in Broward County last year to make way for the widening project.
Around Florida's Turnpike Enterprise
The Launch of the New SunPass Mini (Above)
On July 1, a press conference was held at the Pompano
Beach Service Plaza to launch the much anticipated
SunPass Mini. Shown from left to right are Turnpike
Executive Director Jim ELy, FDOT Assistant Secretary
for Engineering and Operations Kevin Thibault, and
Deputy Executive Director Jennifer Olson.
Broward County Turnpike Widening
First E85 Fuel Customer on the Turnpike (Below)
On July 3, Florida’s Turnpike Turkey Lake Service
Plaza gas station became the first station in Central
Florida to offer E85 (ethanol) for sale to the motoring
public. As of September 19, E85 is also available at
the Port St. Lucie/Ft. Pierce Service Plaza.
Richard Brown from Newman, Georgia became the
Turnpike's first customer to pump E85 fuel.
The widening project in Broward County also includes the replacement of overpasses with longer bridge
spans to accommodate the new lanes below. Shown above are the center columns for the new Peters
Road overpass that is scheduled to be completed by late 2009.
I­95 Express in Miami­Dade
Later this year the I-95 Express lanes will begin
collecting variably priced tolls using SunPass
transponders. 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.
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
Joanne B. Hurley
Nichole L. Kalil
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