[Times photo: Skip O'Rourke]
The first 6 miles of elevated expressway was completed Feb. 11, as seen just east of 50th Street. Commuters will cruise above the Lee Roy Selmon, I-75 and State Road 60.
To quench the hunger of commuters for roadway, concrete piers are sprouting in the median of the Lee Roy Selmon Expressway heading toward downtown Tampa. The piers will support 6 miles of elevated roadway that will be part of 9 miles of reversible lane expressway.
The road will start in downtown Tampa at Meridian Street and end at the new Brandon Parkway. Commuters will cruise above the Lee Roy Selmon Expressway, Interstate 75 and State Road 60 at heights ranging from 25 feet near 39th Street to a high of 72 feet near downtown Tampa.
The $350-million project is on schedule, according to Scott C. Updegrave, senior construction manager for PCL Civil Constructors Inc.
The first mile of the elevated expressway was completed Feb. 11. Six of the 9 miles will be a bridge. The bridge is made up of 3,032 concrete segments that are pulled together to form 196 spans that will rest on 206 piers. Each span consists of 12 to 16 segments.
As of mid February, 36 spans had been completed and 127 piers had been poured. Inside the bridge will be 8,357,900 feet of posttensioning cable. That is 1,583 miles - the distance between Tampa and Maine. The bridge section alone is 287,874 tons of concrete, enough to fill a football field seven stories high.
By July 2005, when the road is expected to open, the Tampa-Hillsborough Expressway Authority projects that as many as 100,000 cars will use it each day.
In the mornings, three lanes will carry traffic west from Brandon to Tampa. Before evening rush hour, the lanes will reverse direction to bring downtown workers back home to southeastern Hillsborough County. The road will give commuters a one-way, nonstop ride that has none of the delays associated with on-ramps and tollbooths.
