FORT MYERS, Fla. — As more people move to Florida, the state’s busy roads will only get busier, so on Monday, state leaders announced a new sped-up timeline to get some major road projects underway.
“We don't want our roads, our infrastructure to be the things that hold people back. We want to move forward,” said Florida Lt. Gov. Jeanette Nuñez at a press conference in Fort Myers.
That’s the ultimate goal of the “Moving Florida Forward Infrastructure Initiative,” a $4 billion injection of funds pushed by Gov. DeSantis and passed by the legislature towards a list of 20 statewide “congestion relief” projects.
“We’ll average about 300,000 new residents per year, that’s like adding a city slightly smaller than Orlando and a little bit larger than St. Pete, every year,” said Florida Sen. President Kathleen Passidomo.
Nuñez also announced that a few of the projects in Lee and Collier counties are now fully funded and two years ahead of schedule.
“Oftentimes the first place you can tell that growth and that uptick in population is on our roadways,” she said. “We're confident that we’ll begin construction in 2025, early 2025."
That could bode well for other projects on the list, like a planned widening of Interstate 275 from 38th Avenue to 4th Street in St. Pete and another one on Interstate 75 and Fruitville Road in Sarasota County.
The Tampa Bay area projects are in the design phase, so we could still be a few years away from seeing construction related to those.
“This $4 billion infrastructure initiative will provide traffic congestion relief, adding new travel lanes, widening existing roadways, building more efficient interchanges and improving safety and resiliency features to better serve our increasing traffic demand,” Passidomo explained.
To see a full list of the projects and their projected schedules, click here.