$937.4 million bridge project<\/a>, connecting Tampa and St. Pete.<\/p>\nThe new express lanes extend from 4th Street North in St. Pete to just north of the bridge in Tampa. They are in the median of I-275 and separated from the general-use lanes by barrier walls and flexible plastic poles.<\/p>\n
Drivers can make their way on the express lanes by traveling just north of 4th Street North, continuing across the Howard Frankland Bridge, and merging back into the general-use lanes just north of the bridge.<\/p>\n
The project also includes a new 12-foot-wide pedestrian and bicycle trail linking Hillsborough and Pinellas counties.<\/p>\n
FDOT says the expanded bridge configuration could significantly improve traffic throughput.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd that will obviously be adding a great amount of capacity that we can push through the bridge,\u201d FDOT engineer Austin Petersen said.<\/p>\n
Don’t worry about paying a fee, for now. The lanes are currently toll-free as part of the ongoing testing phase.<\/p>\n
Tolls will be collected at around 50 cents per trip following the testing phase. FDOT did not specify when that would be.<\/p>\n
The lanes are also expected to eventually connect with additional express lane systems on both sides of the bay.<\/p>\n
Access to the bridge\u2019s shared-use path is available every day from sunrise to sunset from the connection points located at the north end of 4th Street in St. Petersburg and the south end of Reo Street in Tampa. Additional future connections from Ulmerton Road and 4th Street North in St. Petersburg, as well as Reo Street in Tampa, are being constructed under separate active construction projects.<\/p>\n
Over the next few nights, the Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT) will work to open the southbound express lanes.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou get from end to end in an express lane,\u201d Petersen said. \u201cWe do have plans in the future for connectivity on the east end of the bridge to additional express lanes.\u201d<\/p>\n
FDOT says the Tampa Bay region\u2019s rapid growth has made expanding bridge capacity increasingly important.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople are moving here every day. They\u2019re here on vacation,\u201d Petersen said. \u201cSo, yes, it\u2019s a challenge that we have to try to meet to keep up with the demand.\u201d<\/p>\n
10 Tampa Bay News’ Eric Glasser contributed to this story.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The new lanes are part of a $937.4 million bridge project, connecting Tampa and St. Pete. TAMPA, Fla.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":286346,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[202,204,203,199,201,200],"class_list":["post-286345","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-st-petersburg","tag-st-pete","tag-st-pete-headlines","tag-st-pete-news","tag-st-petersburg","tag-st-petersburg-headlines","tag-st-petersburg-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/286345","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=286345"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/286345\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/286346"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=286345"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=286345"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=286345"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}