Florida balks at bike-trail tunnels with $40 million price tag

Martin E. Comas, Orlando Sentinel on Jan 21, 2025

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ORLANDO, Fla. — A years-old plan by Seminole County to build a pair of tunnels along a popular trail near Altamonte Springs — giving bicyclists and pedestrians an easy way to cross under two of the busiest highways in Central Florida — may be dead after commissioners glimpsed the estimated price tag.

“The idea of the tunnels then was a fun and exciting alternative that would be safe. And I think the citizens would love it,” Commissioner Lee Constantine said at Tuesday’s board meeting. “But sometimes you can’t have everything you want. And in this case, knowing all that I know now, I could never, ever, even consider it, with all the other needs in this county.”

Constantine made the comments after a county staff presentation showed constructing the underpasses along the Seminole Wekiva Trail at State Road 436 and Laurel Street, and at State Road 434 and Orange Avenue, would cost nearly $40 million.

That’s a 14% jump from January 2022, when commissioners enthusiastically approved the subterranean passages for trail users to bypass eight lanes of traffic at each intersection.

Seminole officials and residents have long lauded their county’s network of recreational trails giving bikers, runners and hikers a stress-free way to travel, mostly without worrying about cars.

The Seminole Wekiva Trail is one of the county’s most popular with hundreds of users a day. It stretches about 16 miles between State Road 46 at Longwood Markham Road, just east of the Lake County line, and the intersection of Bear Lake Road and Maitland Boulevard, just north of Orange County.

But Seminole commissioners said they could go only so far in spending taxpayer money to improve the pathway.

“I’ve walked this trail many times. They’re safe crossings,” Commissioner Bob Dallari said. “You wait for the little green light. And you cross the road. It is safe, if you wait for the traffic light. … I don’t think we should be spending additional money at this point when there are already traffic lights in place to cross these roads.”

Commissioners then decided to put the tunnel proposal on hold until county staff explores alternatives — including building bridges, which are less expensive, and urging the state Department of Transportation to pay for a portion of either tunnels or bridges.

Emily Bush, executive director of Bike/Walk Central Florida, a nonprofit organization that advocates for bicyclist and pedestrian safety, said either a tunnel or a bridge would increase the trail's appeal.

“When you get to a traffic light that makes you stop and wait 4 minutes to cross, it’s going to deter people from using the trail,” she said.

But Bush said she understood Seminole commissioners balking at the price tag.

“It doesn’t surprise me,” she said. “It’s a good point. They have to balance the costs and the value.”

Building bridges at the two intersections would cost an estimated $24.2 million, according to the staff report.

The area of southwest Seminole around the crossings is thickly congested with traffic — more than 50,000 vehicles daily at each intersection — and dozens of big and small retail stores. It is also surrounded by apartment complexes and residential subdivisions.

According to county data, just two trail users were injured at the intersections — a bicyclist and a pedestrian — within the past three years.

But Commissioner Amy Lockhart said she felt “a little bit like I’m in a twilight zone here” after fellow commissioners backed off a tunnel plan they previously approved.

“Everything we heard [then] was that heavy users of this trail needed a crossing to safely cross, and it had to be part of the trail system” she said. “And now we don’t have a perceived safety problem.”

Interviewed on the trail Wednesday morning, resident John Higginbotham — who often rides nearly 20 miles daily on the Seminole Wekiva Trail — said that either a tunnel or a bridge “would be so great” at the intersections.

“You wouldn’t have to worry about someone running a red light,” he said while taking a pause in his ride. “And you can just go without waiting for your turn to cross.”

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