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Bruce B. Downs Boulevard cannot keep pace.

By RODNEY THRASH
Published in the St. Pete Times North of Tampa section February 6, 2004

NEW TAMPA - Traffic was slowing to a snail-like crawl last December when Suzanne Buckley heard the bang.

The Lutz business owner had traveled Bruce B. Downs Boulevard long enough and often enough to recognize it for what it was - yet another automobile accident.

Please, don't hit me, Buckley silently told herself. Don't hit me. All she wanted to do was get home to Apollo Beach.

Buckley's silent plea was barely over when she heard another bang. This time, it was louder. And this time, though the speedometer was at zero, her 2001 Cadillac El Dorado moved.

Buckley also had been hit.

The impact accelerated her smack-dab into another car, created a four-car pileup along Bruce B. Downs and Amberly Drive and left her vehicle with $7,000 worth of back- and front-end damage. No one was hurt. But when it was over, she needed a new bumper in the front and back, a new grille, a new exhaust system and a new coat of cherry red paint.

"Once it's touched, it never comes out the same," Buckley said of the post-accident paint job. "The average person isn't going to see it, but I know it."

Buckley's crash was one of hundreds along Bruce B. Downs last year. There were so many that two Bruce B. Downs intersections made the Sheriff's Office's annual list of 25 places you're most likely to have an accident.

In fact, the 918 accidents on Bruce B. Downs last year accounted for a quarter of all the reports the Sheriff's Office wrote in 2003. And while accidents dropped in the larger sheriff's district that includes the University of South Florida area, they increased in the stretch of Bruce B. Downs that runs through New Tampa.

Most of the accidents were fender-benders, the result of an increasingly dysfunctional network of roads, too many cars, a lapse in judgment among commuters or all of the above.

Hundreds of cars and thousands of people were bruised and battered. Insurance companies shelled out millions last year for car repairs, medical bills and other claims.

Three families wish they and their loved ones were so lucky.

On Oct. 29 a Gainesville driver sent Russell David Howell's car careening down an incline next to Interstate 75. Howell, who had celebrated his 23rd birthday eight days earlier, did not survive.

The sheer volume of accidents last year, an average of about 18 a week, were a reminder of how deficient Bruce B. Downs has become as populations in New Tampa and southeast Pasco County have skyrocketed. A number of transportation projects are on the books, all promising to take the load off Bruce B. Downs.

The way Sheriff's Office crime analyst John Chaffin sees it, without some kind of relief, "there's never a good time to take Bruce B. Downs Boulevard."

Still Not Enough
Long before there was a New Tampa, Bruce B. Downs was a two-lane country road. One lane led north; the other south. Woods and wildlife, not apartment complexes or shopping centers, were the norm.

"Bruce B. Downs grew up out of cow path," said Bill McCall, a project manager with the Hillsborough County Planning and Growth Management division. "There was never an architect who designed the road" to predict for future growth.

As Tampa Palms and Pebble Creek took shape in the 1980s, the road was still two lanes. Today New Tampa, with some 30,000 residents, is one of Hillsborough County's fastest growing areas. In southeast Pasco County, the population tripled from 1990 to 2000.

In that time, Bruce B. Downs expanded to six lanes from Bearss Avenue to Lake Forest Drive, and four lanes from Lake Forest Drive to a point north of State Road 56 in Pasco.

By some standards, that's not enough.

"Bruce B. Downs exceeds the capacity for four-lane divided," said Tampa traffic engineer Mahdi Mansour. "Some sections exceed the capacity for six-lane divided."

Four-lane roads typically handle 35,000 vehicles while six-lane roads can handle no more than 52,500 before the level of service becomes poor.

Conditions are especially perilous from State Roads 56 to 54 in Pasco, where Bruce B. Downs still is two lanes and undivided.

The trouble isn't just the design of Bruce B. Downs, but rather the lack of new roads. It's basically one way in, one way out, with very few secondary streets to share the load.

"With Brandon or Carrollwood, you have various alternatives," Chaffin said. But when it comes to New Tampa, "You're pretty much limited to Bruce B. Downs."

Don Nevins of Pebble Creek doesn't mince words when it comes to Bruce B. Downs.

It's "a failed road," said Nevins, a member of the New Tampa Transportation Working Group.

Yet the cars keep coming.

Just how many? An average of 45,993 a day, Tampa transportation records say. Some sections see more than 55,000 cars and most handle more cars than transportation officials say should be on the road.

How bad is it? You be the judge:

- City Limits to Amberly Drive: 55,246 cars; 34,200 capacity

- Amberly Drive to Tampa Palms Boulevard: 47,733 cars; 37,800 capacity

- Tampa Palms Boulevard to I-75: 41,760 cars; 37,800 capacity

- I-75 to Hunter's Green Drive: 54,756 cars; 34,200 capacity

- Hunter's Green Drive to New Tampa and Cross Creek boulevards: 48,153 cars; 34,200 capacity

- New Tampa Blvd and Cross Creek boulevards to County Line Road: 28,310 cars; 37,800 capacity

Not even 20 years ago, that average was just a few thousand, according to a 1986 transportation study. From Skipper Road to I-75, 3,400 cars - not even a tenth of today's total average - used Bruce B. Downs. From I-75 to County Line Road, it was even smaller - 2,900.

Or blame the drivers
Blame the design and number of cars all you want. Buckley would rather blame the drivers.

"It's not the road that's not safe," she said. "It's the people and what they're doing."

Amen to that, says Nevins, who estimates he has seen at least three accidents - per week.

"When you get people trying to fudge on the stoplights, you're asking for trouble," he said. "Drivers are just in too much of a hurry to get places. People change lanes at points in the roadway where the no lane change rule is in effect.

"It just boils down to, if people would observe the rules of the road, accidents would reduce considerably."

Buckley's accident is a classic example. The driver who started it was a 20-year-old Riverview man on a cell phone. And he wasn't just talking on the cell phone, a Florida Highway Patrol report says. He was typing text messages to a friend. Never mind that the light at Bruce B. Downs and Amberly turned red or that it was 6:10 p.m., a peak traffic period.

"Between 5 and 6:30, those roads are bumper to bumper," Buckley said. "When you're driving in that kind of traffic, you don't text message. You don't do anything. You pay attention to what you're doing."

Buckley's and Nevins' theory isn't that far off base. A review of 61 Florida Highway Patrol reports from November and December showed that most of the time, accidents occurred because drivers did not use common sense. The phrase "careless driving" appeared 31 times. Many involved barely legal teenagers behind the wheels. Still others showed a basic disregard for the law.

"How are you going to eliminate that?" Buckley asked. "It's not possible."

"A matter of money"
Start by building new roads and widening Bruce B. Downs, Chaffin says. If only it were so easy, Bruce B. Downs wouldn't be in the condition it is today.

"It comes down to a matter of money," McCall said. Widening the road to six lanes in Pasco and eight in New Tampa would cost an estimated $168-million, requiring substantial federal aid. "The money has never been there to do the job."

Even if it were, Bruce B. Downs may never catch up with relentless traffic growth.

By 2028, the Florida Department of Transportation estimates Bruce B. Downs will carry an average load as high as 61,000 vehicles. At some intersections like Bearss Avenue and Lake Forest Drive, that number will hover around 75,000.

"We can't catch up because there's latent demand," he said. "We don't know the amount. As driving conditions get better, more and more people will start driving. It's people that don't bother to get off the couch because the conditions are so bad today. That throws our model out of whack."

What's more, widening the road does not translate into better driving habits. "That's in control of the motorists," Nevins said.

Buckley, who was in the pileup, still takes Bruce B. Downs to get to her business, the Pine Tree Village Mobile Park in Lutz. Some weeks she is on the road every day.

"I can't live in fear," she said. "You just hope you don't have one of those people behind you."

- Rodney Thrash can be reached at 269-5313 or rthrash@sptimes.com