Lee County Commission approves next phase of Burnt Store Road expansion project

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Burnt Store Road isn’t known as Airport Road without reason.

“It can be a little bit dangerous because people are going pretty fast on it sometimes,” said Cape Coral resident Alex Teijido.

Fast, furious and flying through the lanes, it can get really dangerous, especially if you drive past Van Buren Parkway in Cape Coral, just north of the Lee and Charlotte County lines.

It’s where the road merges into one lane.

“You have traffic going very quickly, it gets to the bottleneck, that’s what we call it,” John Fleming said, Chairman for the Burnt Store Corridor Coalition. “It gets slow. People still want to drive quick, you have accidents. And if there was an evacuation, our concern is that if there was an accident on that section of the road, it would cut off people from being able to evacuate the area, and that would lead to lives lost.”

That’s why the Lee County Board of Commissioners approved the next phase to the Burnt Store Road expansion project at their meeting Tuesday morning.

They voted to provide the Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT) with $2.5 million in funds to advance their designs.

It’s an expansion project that’s been underway since 2015, but it might see some movement soon.

The 5.7-mile stretch of Burnt Store Road plans to widen from 4 lanes to 6 lanes, and that dangerous spot near the county lines will go from a 2-lane undivided road to a 4-lane divided road.

It’s something the Burnt Store Corridor Coalitions and its 11 communities are happy to hear. But they also hope it won’t take as long as predicted.

“The original date for completion was 2030,” said Fleming. “We would like to see the road started in 2026, if possible, financially, and we’re hoping there are no major hurricanes here until the road gets done. We saw what happened after Ian. It was a mess. And we really would need that peace of mind.”

According to FDOT, crews are still conducting an environmental and engineering study for the project. It’s expected to wrap up by the Fall.

Fleming said he hopes they can get right to work after that, so they don’t have to wait through too many more hurricane seasons.

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