Burnt Store Road widening in final phase

The Burnt Store Road widening project has entered its third and final phase. It’s a project highly anticipated by many of the people who live nearby in Cape Coral, who say one of the main issues on the road is the congestion, especially during rush hour.

Burnt Store Road stretches almost 20 miles from Cape Coral to I-75 in Charlotte County. Construction crews began work on the Charlotte portion earlier in 2020.

Drivers who take this road often say they hope this project will relieve some traffic woes. Lee County has plans to widen the road from two lanes to four on a stretch of Burnt Store from Pine Island Road to Tropicana Parkway.

“It isn’t a straight-through road, and it is wide, and there’s a lot of traffic and congestion,” said Peter Simmons of St. James City. “You’ve got December, January, February and March—there’s a lot of people down here. You can see the influx of the people up north that want to get out of the cold.”

“I’m really excited, because we travel that road all the time,” said Terry Furge of Cape Coral. “One: It’s just deteriorating with all the heavy traffic, especially with all the construction going on out here, there’s so many dump trucks traveling that road and that two-lane is getting beat up pretty badly.”

This last stretch of the project is expected to cost about $13.6 million. Work is scheduled to begin in January and is expected to be completed in late 2022.