Growth in Orlando and the East West Expressway

Ever since graduating from high school over 20 years ago, I have lived in Orlando as I first moved to go to school at the University of Central Florida. I remember driving on State Road 50 from Titusville seeing all of the trees and thinking that one day the city will continue to grow to move East towards Titusville. Orlando has grown so much that it has at least 6 toll roads between Kissimmee through Orlando to Sanford.

Now the Expressway Authority is looking to expand the East West Expressway almost all the way to State Road 520 that goes to Cocoa in Bithlo. The traffic coming from new homes Chuluota and Wedgefield (off 520 outside of Bithlo) have kept SR 50 log jammed in the morning and evenings. Weekends were impossible also until they widened SR 50 from Avalon Park Blvd to Dean Road which was opened this past Thanksgiving. Unfortunately the entrance and exit at the East end of the East West Expressway (408) has been very busy but the traffic does flow better.







Below are a number of pictures I took of maps at the recent public meeting to discuss the planned construction. The first 2 is of the handout given upon entering the meeting at Corner Lake Middle School.

I found this part of the map interesting as it shows entrance and exits at Woodbury Road near Waterford Lakes. They have made some improvements at Woodbury Road and Lake Underhill, but the road is still too small for the traffic many times during the day especially during school hours. Because of the location of nearby schools, this road probably shouldn't be widened and the entrance and exits to the 408 should not be placed here.
















This map is of the different options the Expressway Authority was looking at. They have picked option number 4.















The following pictures are parts of the large map they had 3 of them on display. Each map was approximately 15 feet long and approximately 6 feet tall. There were so many people there, it was impossible to take a panoramic picture of the whole thing and I wasn't coming back for when the crowd left.

This first part is showing where it will continue from where it presently ends at SR 50 East Colonial. It appears that people will be able to turn right and head towards UCF and Research Park as well as travel East from that area as well.














This next section shows where the 408 is going to cross Avalon Park Blvd. It appears that you will be able to enter and exit here as well.















I found this part of the map interesting as it shows a long entrance and exit to Chuluota Road. I hope they improve the traffic light there because it is horrible to turn on to Chuluota Road. The main part of expressway is showing to go behind the high school and continues South of a majority of the homes in Bithlo as shown on the next picture.










This part of the map shows the new end of the East West Expressway to be around a 1000 yards West of Orlando's Speedworld Racetrack. If you are familiar with this area, you know that it is between a 0.5 and 1 miles from the SR 520 exchange. It does not appear that there will be an easy on ramp for people traveling West as they will have to turn left to get on the expressway. I don't know if that is the design for sure.



The funniest part about this community meeting is the group that wants to prevent growth in East Orlando. Growth is coming whether you like it or not. If you live in this area, you need to figure out how you can capitalize on the growth or get out and move out to the middle of nowhere like this area was 30 years ago and hope you don't make it look so good that everyone else wants to move there too. You will have to go back to complaining about how it takes you an hour to get to Wal-Mart like it did for the past 30 years until they improved the roads and expanded East.

By the way, based on the growth of this area, the traffic at the Super Wal-Mart and Neighbood Wal-Mart's in East Orlando along with the traffic at the Titusville Wal-Mart shows there is a need for another Wal-Mart probably in Bithlo which I thought was crazy for the past 10 years when they were talking about it. There is a push to make East Orlando into its own city which really makes sense as there is a need for more services like hospital and police.

Real life Sim City!!!