A plan that could one day give Cape Coral drivers a direct connection to I\u201175 is gaining traction in Lee County, but it\u2019s far from a done deal.<\/p>\n
At a recent meeting, Lee County commissioners voted to include a proposed interchange extending Del Prado Boulevard east across the canal to I-75 on the county\u2019s legislative agenda. The goal: ease congestion on one of the city\u2019s busiest thoroughfares.<\/p>\n
But for everyday drivers, the question remains: Will the project help, or simply shift the traffic bottleneck somewhere else?<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s so much in the way \u2014 that\u2019s at least six, seven miles from where Del Prado becomes another street, and there\u2019s a million neighborhoods in that area in North Fort Myers,\u201d says longtime homeowner Matthew Allen, whose family has visited Del Prado since the 1980s.<\/p>\n
According to county officials, the first step isn\u2019t construction \u2014 it\u2019s a study by the Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT) examining traffic flow, environmental impacts and route alignments. That process alone could take five years, Commissioner Brian Hamman says. After that, securing funding could add a decade or more \u2014 Allen estimates 10 to 15 years before anything changes on the ground.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, regular commuters already know what gridlock feels like.<\/p>\n
\u201cOh, man, you\u2019re cooked. Six, seven hours just trying to get out of Cape Coral,\u201d said Anthony Ramirez, describing his typical ride.<\/p>\n
Allen, who has watched Del Prado evolve since 1982, says the traffic isn\u2019t getting better, and he doesn\u2019t believe this project should move beyond the drawing board.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Del Prado exchange simply \u2026 it doesn\u2019t have to happen. On the list of priorities, where should it be? It shouldn\u2019t even be on the list.\u201d<\/p>\n
For now, drivers stuck in Del Prado traffic will have to keep waiting for a faster way out of the city.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A plan that could one day give Cape Coral drivers a direct connection to I\u201175 is gaining traction…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":35218,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[209,211,210,325,115],"class_list":["post-35217","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cape-coral","tag-cape-coral","tag-cape-coral-headlines","tag-cape-coral-news","tag-lee","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35217","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=35217"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35217\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35218"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35217"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35217"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35217"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}