OSCEOLA COUNTY, Fla. — A Central Florida resident is looking for possible changes that would address the congestion south of Walt Disney World that causes clogged roads and major delays.
Brian Weber said when he travels home, he gets caught in traffic at the U.S. 192 and Old Lake Wilson Road intersection.
“I've been stuck here for an hour getting home, and it's only like a four-mile trip,” he said. “There have been a couple of times when it's been an hour. Most of the time it's 25-30 minutes.”
Much of the traffic is coming from Walt Disney World and Celebration, using Old Lake Wilson Road as a way to get down to Reunion, ChampionsGate and Davenport, without having to take I-4, Weber said.
He asked whether there is another north-south route nearby, to ease the demand getting onto Old Lake Wilson Road.
“If they could extend World Drive past Celebration down to Osceola Polk Line Road, or down even now to Ronald Reagan Parkway. That's where everybody's trying to get to,” he said.
Right now, World Drive dead ends in Celebration.
Weber said he believes extending it south would help.
“That would take a lot of traffic off of Old Lake Wilson Road, and it'd be a smarter commute for people coming down U.S. 192 to go down World Drive rather than try to go down Old Lake Wilson Road,” Weber said.
Osceola County spokesperson Nicky Vasquez said there are no plans to extend World Drive.
“(Extending World Drive) would require encroachment into the environmentally sensitive Reedy Creek watershed and be cost-prohibitive to design, permit and construct,” Vasquez said.
“I'm not advocating to destroy wetlands, I'm not advocating to fill it in,” Weber said.
Near the World Drive dead end is Celebration Boulevard, where the county is right now studying an extension to Celebration Boulevard down to Osceola Polk Line Road.
There’s also some help coming to Old Lake Wilson Road for commuters like Weber. The Florida Department of Transportation and Osceola County are planning to widen the road, including at the two-lane bridge over I-4 from Sinclair Road to Osceola Polk Line Road.
“It's getting worse because on Old Lake Wilson Road, they're building more and more houses, too, right now,” Weber said.
FDOT has a project planned for US-192, but no operational changes are in the works at the intersection with Old Lake Wilson Road.
However, an FDOT spokesperson said the department will look at whether signal-timing adjustments would help reduce backups.
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