TAMPA, Fla. — Downtown Tampa commuters who use South Tampa Street are now following a new route. A traffic shift on the piece of the street from East Brorein to South Franklin took effect at 8 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 20, and is expected to stay in place for roughly two years while crews work on the Lee Roy Selmon Expressway above.
Drivers who normally follow the S curve on South Tampa Street toward South Franklin Street will be sent into the far left lane of East Brorein Street. The one southbound lane left on South Tampa Street at Brorein becomes a left-turn-only lane, and Brorein shifts to a temporary two-way setup with a barrier dividing the newly striped lanes. Between South Morgan Street and South Florida Avenue, the left lane of Brorein is closed for the length of the work.
The Tampa Hillsborough Expressway Authority said the convention center parking garage and the exhibit hall upper loading docks stay open during construction, though the garage entrance was closed overnight into Wednesday morning for restriping.
The detour makes room for support columns for the South Selmon Capacity Project, which adds an inside lane each way and takes the expressway to six lanes along a 4.5-mile stretch that runs just past Himes Avenue on the west end and just past Florida Avenue downtown. The authority puts the price at $362 million, paid with toll money rather than state or federal taxes, and says traffic on the Selmon has climbed more than 80 percent in ten years.
Beyond easing backups, the agency says the wider road should keep cut-through drivers off Bayshore Boulevard and nearby neighborhood streets. Plans also call for brick noise walls in residential areas, and the underpass at Bay-to-Bay and MacDill is set to become a multi-use park. Foundation drilling is also under way, with heavy equipment limited to 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.
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Filed under: Tampa FL Traffic News
