Winter Park Road to get a lot more traffic soon
General Rees is going to be closed for a few months. Obama bucks are going to redesign it and repave it.
General Rees gets about 6,000 cars a day which will be diverted to Winter Park Road which gets 8,000 cars a day now. General Rees used to get more traffic, but as it turned into a sea of road patches, it’s volume dropped while Winter Park Road’s volume increased commensurately.
Work will begin in April/May and let’s hope it is over by November.
For more info see here
redesign?
It definitely needs new pavement!
I avoid both of those roads, using the streets in the neighborhood between. Don’t tell the motorists! Those streets are really pleasant!
Please post your route!
Redesign as the whole mess has a serious drainage problem.
General Rees used to be the firebreak between the Orlando Air Force Base guided missile school and the neighborhood. They used to test fire missiles every Friday night, part of the Orlando “after dark” entertainment along with watching the Lake Eola fountain and the occasional moon shoot. This was “BD” Before Disney.
After the school was shut down(1965-ish?), the sandy firebreak was donated to Orange County. OC tossed down some asphalt and things have not been right since.
Expensive job, though. $1.6 million for less than a mile. Costs money to do the job right.
Eric, I don’t think 1.6 million is all that much, that’s pretty typical for road work. My head spins when I look over our list of roadway projects.
Normal resurfacing projects usually cost in the neighborhood of 500k a mile. This road was never built correctly from the start, so it’s like building a whole new road from scratch and that is why it costs so much.
They will be adding drainpipes and what not so it doesn’t go downhill so fast.
And yeah, my head spins when I see the Metroplan project list, too.
Here you go. Blue is my regular route when I’m headed to the Lakemont/Aloma area. Green is an alt to bypass WP Rd entirely (with the downside of not having a traffic light to cross Corrine). Most of those roads have fresh, smooth pavement and no traffic.
That’s pretty cool! I knew about the blue route, but not the alt route and I live here! I thought I was the “cut-through king”, but I tip my hat to you.
You may need that alt route when 14,000 cars a day come down WP Road.
The cities and County don’t talk to each other.
After I realized that this big deal was actually going to happen, I fired off some emails to Butch and the Chief of Police in Winter Park tonight (Friday night after working hours).
Neither of them seemed to know anything about it. I got responses within an hour saying, “Really? We are on it!”
And now they will be. One would think that before the County dumped 6,000 cars a day on a city, they would give them notice? One would be wrong.
I don’t think one can assume all the Gen. Rees traffic will go to Winter Park Rd. Some will filter through Baldwin Park.
And as others have pointed out, converting the road to curb & gutter costs much more than a simple resurfacing, and will result in a road that won’t fall apart so quickly in the future.
At least the County/City got the left turn light at Winter Park road adjusted to allow more traffic turning off Corrine.
And the added traffic to west Glen Ridge and Winter Park is showing how much that needs an upgrade. But it is fun to watch the Nice cars bounce along the washboard.
Here it is November & the progress on improving General Rees is moving like a snail. Every day I drive by both ends of the road & see very little progress. Is this a make-work project funded with stimulus $$??
OPEN!
Eleven days late.
Noticed that yesterday as the cargo group passed it on Corrine. Will be good for getting the endless lines of traffic off Winter Park Road.
I will continue to use my neighborhood route.