Gainesville completes SW 62nd Boulevard Connector project ahead of schedule
Press release from City of Gainesville
GAINESVILLE, Fla. – The City of Gainesville has completed the SW 62nd Boulevard Connector project, opening the 1.1-mile roadway one month ahead of schedule. The new span links the Newberry Road and Oaks Mall area with the Archer Road and Butler Plaza area, improving accessibility and safety and shaving time off neighborhood commutes.
Funded in large part by a grant from the Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT), the $18.8 million connector is designed as a multimodal artery. It features wider (11-foot) travel lanes, ten-foot shoulders with seven-foot buffered bicycle lanes on each side, and a 10-foot multi-use path. It also includes the first simple span bridge constructed by the City of Gainesville, with a 330-foot segment crossing Hogtown Creek.
“A well-connected road network is crucial,” said Gainesville Mayor Harvey Ward. “These changes improve safety and make it easier for neighbors to choose alternative modes of transportation. They help disperse traffic and reduce delays and congestion. In the end, they make our community more comfortable, more convenient, and a safer place to live.”
In using a “Complete Streets” model, the connector aligns with the Vision Zero Policy adopted by the Gainesville City Commission in 2018 to improve traffic safety. This approach to planning, designing, building, operating, and maintaining streets enables safe access for all people who need to use them, including pedestrians, bicyclists, motorists, and transit riders of all ages and abilities.
Long recognized as a necessary solution to ease traffic congestion, the direct route between SW 43rd Street/Clark Butler Boulevard and the southern end of SW 52nd Street improves flow on SW 34th Street, SW 20th Avenue, Newberry Road, and Archer Road. It also has potential to increase highway efficiency and reduce accident rates on I-75 by giving drivers an alternate path across southwest Gainesville.
“This project has been talked about since the 1990s,” said City of Gainesville Public Works Director Brian Singleton. “It’s very exciting to complete the roadway grid that provides these safe and improved options for motorists, bicyclists, and pedestrians navigating between the commercial centers in this part of the city.”
With the SW 62nd Boulevard Connector complete, the City has four other high-visibility road projects currently in the works. These include the University Avenue safety improvements funded by an $8 million grant from the U.S. Department of Transportation; improvements to NE Ninth Street funded by the Streets Stations and Strong Foundations (SSSF) half-cent infrastructure surtax; the planned addition of buffered bike lanes to NW Eighth Avenue between Sixth Street and Main Street; and the resurfacing of NW Eighth Avenue from Newberry Road to NW 40th Drive.
Now….prioritize the other pot hole filled roads before your next social engineering money flush.
It just gets a driver from one gridlocked mess of traffic to a poorly designed, ill-conceived abortion of roadway a couple minutes faster.
18.8 million to build a road with bike path, 13 million to build a new bike path only (Archer Braid). Seems a little off to me, especially since a bike path already runs from Archer to I75 and down Tower Road
They built a much needed connector road over Hogtown Creek. This required a bridge. Bridges are generally more expensive then roads. A bike path on Archer Road has nothing to do with a bike path on this road. Stop whining.
This will help workers get to their retail and hospitality, dining jobs easier. Many live along 20-24th Ave. 🤗
All the time they save by the new route will be lost if they happen to work on the opposite side of the road because of all, actually lack of, turning lanes and median breaks.
It astounds me; the lack of gratefulness, the amount of self-righteousness, the pure disdain for anything less than mediocre by what we all “think” is sensible or to OUR perfection. I recall, on the 2016 ballot, being asked about paying taxes for better roadways, to which your reply was likely, “no.” In the event that you missed in your reading of the article, GRANTS HELPED FUND THIS PROJECT, not your tax dollars! PAY STATE TAXES if you’d like the finer things in life (that’s what we do in NYC). Until you do… appreciate that you weren’t in the gut wrenching heat making less than you should for the labor provided.
Perhaps you’re not a homeowner and unaware of the fact that we pay the highest property taxes in the entire state. Perhaps instead of taxing us MORE that money could be used to improve the roads.
Also, if you love NY, just take I95 north.
Don’t be ugly. This state is made up of more transplants then born and raised Floridians. Their influx and income pays taxes for all of us. Just not State. If we had state taxes?
Only an idiot would vote to increase their taxes.
You’re from New York? My guess is you’ve done that many times.
Things are so fine in New York, DeSantis is such a bad governor, and the heat and humidity are almost unbearable at times. Why are you here?
I left NY to get away from people who vote for tax increases! As another person wrote, we pay the highest property taxes in the state. They would rather pay for stupid things like the office of diversity and inclusion or some other garbage like that then spend the tax money on fixing roads. We now pay a fire assessment fee because they cant keep their hands of the money that they are supposed to use to support the fire departments! Our cops are some of the lowest paid in the state, but they need to make sure to put aside money for that new bike path you know!! Oh and let’s vote for our county to buy land OFF OF THE TAX ROLLS, then they can bump up that millage on the residential folks to get some of that money back! This local governments priorities are all out of whack!
Floridians widely rejected state income taxes last time that stupidity was placed on a ballot! No reason to send more of our income to government so they can piss it away! We don’t care for government thugs down here!
Phase II of the construction, scheduled to start “as soon as people start using it”, will include adding mis-timed traffic signals every 100 yards.
I just rode the bike path on my cruiser. It looks nice and functional but… already having fast food trash thrown out and it will become an extention of the Butler Boulevard Raceway where tiny drifters in loud backfiring cars and all the muscle cars from the tri-county wanna be racers annoy people daily. The current observed speed limit of those on this road this morning was 50 to 60 mph! It will be sad to see the wrecks start piling up because we don’t enforce highway traffic laws in Gangsville. Big shout out to ACSO to monitor this situation now and give the racers a reason to slow down before the first accident or cyclist/pedestrian death. Some people just don’t appreciate a good thing.