Cape Coral stretch of Burnt Store Rd 2-lane expansion officially done

The long days of sitting in one-lane traffic and listening to construction through the night are over: The opening of an expanded, two-lane stretch of Burnt Store Road in Cape Coral was celebrated with a Thursday morning ribbon-cutting ceremony.

It’s a lot easier to get down Burnt Store Road with two lanes in each direction now that the days of navigating through traffic cones are finally over. Lee County believes the work on the stretch from Pine Island Road to Van Buren Parkway was worth the wait.

Cape Coral resident Ralph Geimer remembers when it was only one lane each way.

“It was like an old country road, but it’s so much better now,” Geimer said. “I live over here by the boat ramp, and we had a tough time getting in and out of our street.”

One of the main components of this project is safety, first of all for drivers.

“I think people were always scared of head-on collisions,” said Lee County Commissioner Brian Hamman. “Sometimes, people would try to pass on that road…. Now we have a wide road with a divided median in the middle and know that it’s a much safer experience.”

For pedestrian safety, walkways have been built underneath the bridge and underneath the road, so you don’t have to worry about traffic.

Those walkways are what excite Ralph Huber the most about the project. Now, he can safely ride his bicycle and walk his poodle Mr. Bojangles.

“We didn’t have that before, and smaller roads like 31st Place and some of the other roads in the community don’t have a sidewalk,” Huber said. “Don’t have a real safe place to walk.”

More space on the road will help with evacuations if another hurricane bears down on Southwest Florida, and help with everyday traffic during the continued growth of northwest Cape Coral.

The expansion project’s total construction cost is $38.2 million. Hamman says the stretch near the border of Lee and Charlotte counties needs to be widened. The timeline for the design, funding and construction of that stretch is 10 years.