I took one of my granddaughters to the Kennedy Space Center last week. We purchased two day admissions back in the spring and the second day tickets were scheduled to expire the end of this month.
Coming home, we got stuck in the traffic between the Beachline (The “Beeline” Expressway to us old timers) and Kissimmee on I-4. It was a mess that proves you can’t fix our transportation issues by building more lanes.
More daunting was the leg from Lakeland home. I decided to try to save time by taking 98 up to Dade City and across on SR 52. Big mistake: US 98 is a mess. FDOT is in the process of changing it from a two lane rural highway into a four lane divided highway. It was a relief to get onto the newly widened SR 52. That relief was short lived.
All along SR 52 west of Dade City there are new apartments and townhomes popping up on previously undeveloped land. What wasn’t apparent were any places for all the new residents to actually WORK. It seems that our county is continuing our historic pattern of building out Pasco County as a bedroom community for Tampa. I know the county has touted “employment centers” and a “connected city” concept for the area, but it definitely wasn’t apparent on our drive west on SR 52.
Combine what I saw with the wall to wall subdivisions along SR 54 and now starting along SR 52 has me humming the Rush hit song “Subdivisions”. Of course, the title of this post quotes the lyrics from Joni Mitchell’s “Big Yellow Taxi”, which addresses some of the other issues with building wall to wall subdivisions.
Closer to home, you can see thousands of new homes popping up on Little Road between Massachusetts and Plathe. Somebody even thought it would be a good idea to build multi-story apartments right below the downwind to base leg turn for Hidden Lakes runway 5. Tall buildings and low flying aircraft. What could POSSIBLY go wrong? Common sense is indeed a rare commodity.
It doesn’t have to be this way. We need to rethink our zeal for more suburban sprawl.
One of the benefits of living in one of our larger cities, New Port Richey, Dade City, and Zephyrhills, is that it is possible to live and work without spending hours a week commuting. Each of these cities has a downtown and nearby residential areas that give locals the option of walking or biking to work instead of driving.
Our summer excursion will be the topic of a future NPR Note, but there are walkable cities in other countries where you don’t need a six thousand pound truck to get from one place to another. You can walk your kids to school or walk a few blocks to the grocery store or other small business.
Let me know what you think.
Rob
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