The Central Florida Expressway Authority (CFX) manages one of the state’s most modern infrastructure systems. In 2014, CFX was established to build and maintain regional transportation infrastructure and alleviate traffic congestion across Central Florida, which includes Brevard, Lake, Orange, Osceola, and Seminole counties. Separate from the Florida Department of Transportation, CFX receives funding generated through toll roads instead of tax dollars, which allows CFX to create new and improved transportation infrastructure with locally collected user tolls.
Dewberry was awarded the general engineering consultant (GEC) contract in 2016 to support the delivery of CFX’s $4.05-billion-dollar, five-year work plan, providing a variety of services across multiple disciplines, including program management, engineering, planning, environmental assessments and permitting, right-of-way, landscape architecture, and multimodal/transit system support. Through these facets, our firm assists CFX in managing over 115 projects. Among these projects are eight construction segments totaling 35 miles of expressway capacity improvement projects along two systems which comprise the beltway system around Orlando, SR 417 and SR 429.
Overcoming Traffic Impacts from Orlando’s Rapid Population Growth
These projects are the culmination of years of study on the overall migration and transportation times of commuters across the Orlando area. With population growth massively increasing in the area, traffic volume has doubled in size in the five years prior to the COVID-19 pandemic and continues to increase, leading to intense congestion on these roadways. CFX had to develop a solution to allow the beltway system to handle another potential doubling of traffic volume over the next 10 years.
Our assistance in CFX’s roadway capacity solution will make for one of the first highways in America designed specifically for part-time shoulder use, otherwise known as flex lanes. Carnot Evans
This flex lanes system reduces overall construction cost, construction impacts to interchanges, construction duration, and still allows CFX to provide the world-class infrastructure for which it is renowned. The 35 combined miles of roadway improvements being constructed with this new system will alleviate congestion and allow for variable incident congestion management.
Pictured is a diagram showing the inclusion of part-time shoulder usage lanes as designed for Route 417 and Route 429.
The capacity improvements on SR 417 and SR 429 will both reduce time spent commuting and provide a safe travel experience for the increased population for the more than 120,000 commuters using these two roadways each weekday.
CFX’s Continuous Construction Plan
As population changes continue to occur and the design and construction of new highway infrastructure is needed, we will continue to aid the CFX team to support their 20-year master plan and provide for highway safety and efficiency.