POLK COUNTY, Fla. — The operations manager of Sabal Transport trucking company, Jeremy Barnes, said the I-4 corridor is the main way his drivers deliver goods.
"I-4 the whole corridor is extremely important. It’s 50 to 60% of what we do on a daily basis. We’ll have anywhere from 20 to 30 trucks running I-4 all day, every day,” said Barnes.
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Barnes said when his drivers are heading into Hillsborough County is when they experience the most traffic congestion.
“When we’re sending trucks back over towards the Tampa area in the afternoon, it starts to bottle up. From what I’m hearing, County Line Road into the Tampa area, will have additional lanes and I think it’ll help out just like it did on the east side,” Barnes said.
The Florida Department of Transportation is planning to install 17 miles of express lanes on I-4 in Hillsborough County, that will stretch from Interstate-75 to the County Line Road at the western boundary of Polk County.
The new lanes should improve the traffic flow, separating "long-distance" traffic from local traffic. Drivers like Brenda Cummings, who often commutes from Lakeland to Tampa said relief can’t come soon enough.
“I leave about two hours before my appointment because the traffic is so bad and you can never predict it. Once you get out there, it’s just so congested and it’s stop and go,” said Cummings.
The $500 million project is being accelerated thanks to the ‘Moving Florida Forward’ initiative. It is similar to the additional travel lanes added on I- 4 east from the U.S. 27 exit in Polk County into Osceola County.
“From the benefits we’re seeing from what they did on the eastern side of the county going into Orlando, it’s a great start,” Barnes said.
Originally slated to begin in 2037, the project will now begin in 2028.
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