OSCEOLA COUNTY, Fla. — The Central Florida Expressway Authority is about to show the public its preferred choice for the last link of its “Southern Beltway.”
What You Need To Know
Central Florida Expressway Authority is hosting public workshops on the alignment for the proposed SR-515
SR-515 would connect Florida’s Turnpike to SR-534 at Nova Road
The toll road is the last piece of the puzzle for the “Southern Beltway”
The “Southern Beltway” is a collection of toll roads that create a half circle in Osceola County.
The goal is to reduce congestion that has been known to plague many of the streets in the county.
“What we’re going to ultimately see is with the ‘Southern Beltway’ that regional traffic is going to get off the local roads and free those up for the local trips,” said Brian Hutchings, senior manager of community relations at the Central Florida Expressway Authority.
Osceola County is the quickest growing county in Central Florida, and according to the Bureau of Economic and Business Research, they expect a 37% population increase in less than 25 years.
“We used to never be able to hear the road,” said Natalie Cole, who runs a sheep farm in the Harmony area. “I think now on a daily (basis), you hear the sirens, you hear the cars, you hear everything that’s going on out there.”
Most of the projects for the “Southern Beltway” are in the design, planned for design, or getting ready for construction phase.
The last piece of the puzzle for the beltway is the State Road 515 Northeast Connector, a proposed 15 to 20 mile expressway that would connect Florida’s Turnpike to US-192 near Harmony and up to Nova Road at the future State Road 534.
The expressway authority is hosting alternative public workshops on the project.
They will hold a virtual workshop on April 22, from 6 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. You can pre-register here.
On Thursday, April 23, they will hold an in-person workshop from 5:30 p.m. until 7:30 p.m. at the St. Cloud Community Center at 3101 17th St.
“When we start these projects, there’s multiple potential alignments that we look at,” said Hutchings. “And then with our community engagement and our engineering team, we try to refine it and refine it until ultimately we bring forth a single proposed alignment.”
They have recommended that this section be Alignment G, which would go south of Lake Gentry and Brick Lake, in between Cat Lake and Lake Conlin.
According to the expressway authority’s analysis, Alignment G has the least impact on homes compared to other proposed routes.
“It could help, it could hurt, it could bring us more traffic or it could help alleviate some of our traffic,” said Cole, who’s on the fence about the project.