Last month, FDOT & Florida Turnpike Enterprise concluded a study to potentially build a toll road from I-10 in Jackson County to US 98 in Bay County. This toll road would plow through some most sparsely populated areas of the state. While I have sympathy for Bay County, who has no limited-access road connection to the Interstate system, but does have three divided highways going north, including US 231 to connect to I-10. In addition the population of the area just doesn’t justify the expenditure. The potential routes are below.

A justification has been floated for this road that growing Bay County needs a limited-access connection to the wider world and for tourists not just from Florida but from other parts of the south as well.

Consider areas with much greater populations do not have a limited-access connection to close to beach areas. Lee County for instance has more residents than the entire Big Bend region yet every connection from I-75 toward the beach is on a surface road. The same can be said for the beaches of southern St Johns and Flagler Counties from I-95 or any of the areas along the Treasure Coast. Heck, Palm Beach County with 1.5 million residents doesn’t have an east-west expressway whatsoever in the county (which is a good thing in my opinion…mass transit should be the option there). This means any trip to a beach area in that county is a hike on heavily traversed surface roads.

And in reality, the beaches of Walton, Santa Rosa and Okaloosa County just west of Bay don’t have a limited access road toward the beach (The Spence Parkway leading to Mid Bay Bridge sort of counts, but not really) so this road might put the immediate areas to the west at a disadvantage. To me that’s a problem because given the political influence of West Florida, I’d expect a proposal for a similar road proposal there and a revival of the extension of the Suncoast Parkway talk to then connect all these roads. This could be the start of a death march for the natural areas in the Big Bend and Northwest Florida.

Currently only two limited-access highways reach the beach in Florida – Butler Blvd in Duval County and the Beachline Expressway in Brevard. Yet lack of limited-access highways hasn’t limited Florida beach going.

In speaking to some activists, they’re concerned about the FPL and St Joe’s angle of this potential road. Those are worthy of discussion but we will save that conversation for the future.