SWFTI News

Rippe credits regional initiative for road funds

05/15/2004

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By Charlie Whitehead
ckwhitehead@naplesnews.com

Road builders in Southwest Florida have their hands full and the fuller the better, state district Transportation Director Mike Rippe told a group of real estate professionals Tuesday.
Rippe said the Legislature’s adoption this week of the state’s $50.4 billion budget will mean even more work going on in his district, which stretches from Sarasota County through Collier County. From the Judge S.S. Jolley Bridge at Marco Island and the new overpass at Golden Gate Parkway and Airport-Pulling Road to the huge expansion project slated for Interstate 75 over the next 25 years, Rippe told the Real Estate Investment Society he expects to have plenty to do both short term and long term.
Rippe said the I-75 project is “the biggest thing I’ve got going on right now.”
Preliminary design work has already begun on a project that, over the long term, will likely put 10 lanes on the interstate. Interim projects will address various interchanges, while the entire interstate in Lee and Collier will be widened to six lanes in the shorter term.
Rippe credited the Southwest Florida Transportation Initiative (SWFTI) with helping pry funding loose at the state level, and said the group is also having success in Washington, D.C. There, he said, Rep. Porter Goss, R-Sanibel, has already requested federal earmarks for that stretch of I-75 between Daniels Parkway and Alico Road. That would help out with $24 million in design funding in the short term, he said.
Many Real Estate Investment Society members also belong to SWFTI. Rippe said if they want to see the road work designed to accommodate Southwest Florida’s growth continue, there’s a straightforward way.
“You can go to the public hearings,” he said. “A lot of folks think that stuff like widening the interstate is a no-brainer, that everyone wants to do it. Not so. We need to have the industry come to the meetings and to the public hearings and if you support the projects say so.”
Rippe said FDOT has been fortunate so far, with no major permitting challenges in the local arena. Permitting agencies blocked the widening of Alico Road – a Lee County project – for about two years.
“We’ve been lucky at this point,” has said. “But we have a couple of projects coming up that are probably going to draw some attention from the folks in the environmental community.”
Rippe has been with FDOT since 1989. He was made director of the local six-county district in 2000.