The still relatively rural swath of Florida’s heartland south of Polk County is home for some prime wildlife habitats for Florida black bears and Florida panthers with a basic road network that has served the area for decades.
To get an idea of how that might change in the future, you might want to view the Heartland Regional Transportation Planning Organization’s 2040 Long Range Transportation Plan.
The Heartland TPO is a relatively new agency just formed in 2015 to provide local input on future transportation projects in Hardee, Highlands, DeSoto, Okeechobee, Glades and Hendry counties.
The future project list includes the six-laning of U.S. 27 between Lake Placid and the Glades County line, the four-laning of State Road 29 in Hendry County and a discussion of the Florida Department of Transportation’s future corridor concepts for changes in the U.S. 27 corridor and for what was once called the Heartland Parkway, a new road from the LaBelle area northeasterly to Polk County to connect to Interstate 4.
The only active section of that project is the Central Polk Parkway, which is proposed to run through rural areas of northeast Polk County, but is mostly on hold because FDOT officials have concluded that most of it is not financially feasible at this time as a toll road.
The fact that the corridor is on a long-range state transportation planning map is important.
To learn more about the Heartland TPO, go to http://heartlandregionaltpo.org/about/ and follow the links.