By Terry Witt – Spotlight Senior Reporter

                U.S. 19 Project Engineer Ryan Asmus confirmed at Tuesday’s Levy County Commission meeting that the Florida Department of Transportation is planning to make improvements to the highway in preparation for the day when the Suncoast Parkway toll road is connected to the highway.

            Asmus heads a Project Development and Engineering study that is examining how the free flow of traffic on U.S. 19 can be preserved after Suncoast Parkway in Citrus County is linked to U.S. 19 by way of a second new toll road known as Suncoast Parkway 2.

            Responding to questions from Spotlight, Asmus said DOT hasn’t drawn any lines on the map at this point indicating what type of improvements would need to be made to U.S. 19 but he said the agency is collecting data to provide guidance on whether it might need to build bypasses for example.

            “There’s going to be additional traffic from the Suncoast connection. That’s absolutely what we’re looking at with our PD&E study. We don’t have lines on paper as far as what improvements need to be made considering the additional volume that’s coming from the connection. Absolutely no improvements have been proposed yet, but we are considering — it’s going to be part of our study going forward,” he said.

            “If you continue to have the free flow conditions that we have out there right now, to preserve that for when the connection is made – those are the improvements we’re looking at making on U.S. 19, and to your point, U.S. 19 will always remain free,” Asmus said. “If a bypass is needed or a grade separation is needed it may not be free, but the free lanes that will be out there will be out there to the end of time.”

            “So there’s no way you would put toll booths on the free lanes of U.S. 19 out there now?” Spotlight asked.

            “The only way we would put booths on there now is if we would add new lanes. Those new lanes would be toll. The existing lanes would be free. We’re not taking away the existing lanes. The department can’t do that. That’s statute,” Asmus said.

            During an earlier toll road study which was named M-CORES, there was discussion of co-locating additional lanes along U.S. 19. The additional lanes, it was stated at that time, would be toll road lanes. Until Tuesday’s board meeting, DOT had not disclosed publicly that co-locating additional new lanes alongside U.S. 19 was a consideration with the new PD&E study.

            Earlier in Tuesday’s discussion, County Commissioner John Meeks responding to Spotlight’s assertion that Suncoast Parkway 2 could dump thousands of additional vehicles on U.S. 19, said Suncoast Parkway 1 was already sending traffic to U.S. 19.

            “To a much lesser extent,” Spotlight responded.

            “You are saying thousands of cars. This guy (Ryan Asmus) is smiling. He’s saying yes, thousands of cars,” Meeks said.

            Spotlight pointed out earlier that Asmus had once again appeared at the county commission meeting during the public comment portion. He wasn’t officially listed on the agenda as a speaker. Spotlight pointed out that while the practice is legal it doesn’t give residents an opportunity to respond to his comments because they don’t know he is going to be a speaker at the board meeting.

            “But he’s not discussing the toll road. He’s discussing highway 19,” Meeks said.

            At first, that was the case in the meeting, but as the discussions progressed with Asmus, the toll roads were discussed at length.

            Commissioners were also asked if they ever considered giving a written report detailing exactly what was discussed with DOT officials a few weeks earlier when each board member met privately with agency officials to discuss whatever highway projects they wanted to discuss, including toll roads. Commissioners can legally meet individually with DOT without public notice or public participation but the bottom-line question is what was discussed at those individual meetings with DOT.

            “Everything that I talked about is everything I said here,” said Commission Chairman Rock Meeks. “There’s no secret about it. I brought up the study from M-CORES way back. I said where we are at and the proposed routes are just proposed routes for study. Just because a route’s picked that doesn’t mean that’s going to happen. Are you asking did they tell us that we might know where the toll road is going to go?”

            Spotlight said that wasn’t the question being asked. The question was whether commissioners had considered writing down what was discussed with DOT privately in the form of a report.

            Commissioner John Meeks said he met with DOT through a phone call.

            “My phone call to them reported essentially what they reported the last time they were here. They were going to pull back on the timeline for the Northern Turnpike Extension. It’s too aggressive because they weren’t going to have anything in place until the end of the year and that’s all I gathered in our conversation,” Meeks said. “They apologized again for the way they rolled out the information and did a poor job of contacting us in advance. That’s what my meeting was about. I can’t testify about what anyone else’s meeting was about. They wouldn’t tell us in advance what they told us at the last meeting, they were pumping the brakes.”

            Asmus also acknowledged that there are several ongoing studies that sometimes confuse the public.

            “There are a couple of different projects – the Suncoast Parkway, the Northern Turnpike Extension, and the U.S. 19 study. There’s a lot of different studies that are creating confusion,” he said.

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Board of County Commission Regular Meeting May 17, 2022; Posted May 21, 2022