Wednesday’s meeting in Davenport on a proposed toll road to allegedly relieve future congestion on U.S.27 drew quite a crowd.
Any meeting when the public outnumbers the consultants and staff shows this is a hot-button issue.
Here are some takeaways
–The process is rigged in a way that until one of the alternative routes on the map is chosen there is no opportunity to push for the no-build alternative.

–That means that there will no information on the location and number of interchanges that would give us the full impact of the sprawl the road would create.

–The Transit-Supported Development Area designation along US 27 that Polk County planners used to push very dense development may turn out in the end to make transit attractive after the gridlock it helped to create occurs.

–No one could really answer the question of why lots of motorists would detour from one gridlocked section of highway to another gridlocked highway or to another section of the same gridlocked highway they fled and pay for the privilege.

–No one is sure the money will ever be available–the project has already been shelved once because of financial uncertainty–to pay for this multi-billion-dollar project and whether the money could better spent elsewhere in the turnpike universe.

As noted in a previous post and recognized by transportation planners, the options for a route for a toll road through eastern Polk County are increasingly challenging because of all of the development that has been competed in recent years or has been approved but not developed yet.
This appears to be pushing most of the proposed alignments dangerously close to the Lake Marion Creek Wildlife Management Area.
Although there are no plans to encroach on public conservation lands directly, the proposed routes do raise a familiar question that has arisen in some of the other proposed road projects in the Kissimmee River Basin.
That is how the presence of a new high-speed road so close to the boundary will affect the ability of land managers to use prescribed fire because that involves avoiding situations in which smoke from the fires could produce unsafe conditions on these highways.
Add to that the effects of noise pollution on the visitor experience in these areas.
I recall a paddling trip on the Suwanee River many years ago that took us under Interstate 75.
It was a day’s paddle before we could no longer hear the thrum of traffic noise.
Add to that the effect on the peace and quiet rural homesteads near the highway’s possible path enjoy today and how that will surely end if any of those routes are chosen.
One proposed route runs so close to the existing road network that one could wonder whether it would be more cost-effective to simply improve those roads if the standard boilerplate goals of the project about freight mobility evacuation routes etc. etc. are what this project is really about.
Anyway, the public meeting is Wednesday beginning at 5:30 p.m. at the Tom Fellows Center on North Boulevard in Davenport. It should be interesting.

The road-building and development lobbies are relentless.
Just when you think a project has been shelved, it comes bounding back for another shot.
We’re talking about the eastern leg of the Central Polk Parkway, a proposed toll road that would run from State Road 60 between Lake Wales and Winter Haven and curve northeasterly along the outskirts of Lake Wales, Dundee, Lake Hamilton, Haines City and Davenport before eventually connecting to another toll road to connect to Interstate 4 near the Polk-Osceola county line via US 17-92.
The official justification for the road is to relieve congestion on US 27, though in reality it has always been about opening land on the edge of these cities to more development, a fact some of its early backers were more up-front about than the people behind other local toll roads.
Anyway, the public will have a chance to chime in on this project at an open house beginning at 5:30 pm. Wednesday at the Tom Fellows Center, 207 North Boulevard, Davenport. There is also a virtual option on Tuesday.
Sierra has long opposed this project for a number of reasons.
Primarily we are not sure it is necessary.
US 27 is certainly congested at peak hours, but that’s because county and city officials have permitted wall-to-wall residential and commercial development along the section in Polk County, especially the section north of Haines City.
People are traveling to and from their homes and shopping destinations and are unlikely to be interested in a lengthy detour route. The same goes for through traffic.
Second, there are more common-sense road projects such as the widening of US 17-92. This is the only two-lane section of US 17 between Punta Gorda and somewhere the other side of DeLand. Fixing this bottleneck would go a long way toward relieving local traffic congestion.
Finally, since this project was first proposed about 15 years ago there has been substantial development in the road’s path. That raises the question about how financially feasible it is today. The only alternatives would seemingly be to plow through public conservation lands, bulldoze homes in the road’s path or build flyovers.
If you live in the area, own property there or use the conservation lands, now is the time to speak up.

Boaters will have a better place to boat and fish on Lake Buffum beginning Saturday.
Work has been completed on a new boat ramp that replaces a former boat ramp that was plagued with difficult launching conditions.
The new ramp is located at 2808 Dog Lindsey Road, Fort Meade. which is north of the current ramp. It will have better parking and improved access.
It is the latest in a series of projects to improve public access to Polk’s major lakes.
Lake Buffum, at 1,543 acres, is Polk County’s 11th largest lake.
Polk officials voted to purchase the five-acre site in 2017. Construction began last year.

When meteorologists discuss scattered showers, they are not kidding.
The weather records compiled by the National Weather Service from 2024 are striking in illustrating this.
It was most obvious when it came to rainfall.
The 73.18 inches recorded in Lakeland made it the second wettest since recordkeeping began in 1915. That made the flooding related in part to a series of hurricanes, reported in low-lying areas around town understandable.
However in central Polk Conty in Winter Haven. the total was 48.02 inches, the 38th wettest since 1941,
In Bartow, where records date to 1892, the 53.82 inches ranked 58th wettest
When it came to average annual temperature, it was the fourth warmest in Winter Haven, sixth warmest in Lakeland and the seventh warmest in Bartow.
Figures were still incomplete for Wauchula, but it does not seem any records will be broken or approached.