ORANGE COUNTY, Fl - One of the busiest corridors in Orlando is one step closer to having a safer way for pedestrians to get around.

Orange County Commissioners approved the design study for a new pedestrian overpass at their board meeting on Tuesday at the intersection of International Drive and Sand Lake Road.

Within a few minutes of standing at that intersection, it becomes obvious why it’s considered one of the busiest in the area, as thousands of vehicles and people come through every day.

This includes the Allen family visiting from southeast London.

“We come here every four to five years once we’ve saved up enough each time, and we’ve been bringing the family since the kids were teenagers and now my daughter is thirty," Peter Allen said.

Allen said they usually stay along I-Drive when they visit and over the years he has noticed a difference in the traffic.

“It has gotten a lot more congested over the years since we’ve been here," Allen said. "We usually have a hired car and have noticed a lot more traffic jams coming up now."

That is one of the reasons why the Orange County Board of Commissioners unanimously approved a design study Tuesday to build a pedestrian overpass that would ease congestion for pedestrians and cyclists.

“Each one of those crosswalks carries 65 pedestrians in a peak hour," explained Orange County Transportation Planning Division Project Manager Blanche Hardy. "So, that’s 260 pedestrians or bicycles occupy the entire intersection in any one given peak hour.”

It's the most that Hardy says she has ever presented to the board.

The recommended pedestrian overpass design is estimated to cost $35.6 million and would be shaped like a drone. It's set to include elevators and wrap-around staircases that would meet in the middle of the intersections above the road

It's a decision that the Allen family believes will be beneficial.

“To me you have got a good system like I was saying early on, and it does work but there’s a lot of traffic here and obviously pedestrians," Allen said. "If something does go wrong, they’re going to get hurt. You’re better off keeping them out of the way of traffic so they don’t have to get involved with any cars.”

And the numbers seem to prove Allen's theory — a nearly 1,000-page county report shows that the area has seen 661 reported crashes between 2017 and 2022, with 12 of them involving pedestrians and one involving a bycyclist.

Officials say their hope is the pedestrian overpass will help decrease those numbers.

The project is expected to begin in 2027 and should be done by 2030.