By Ed Offley
For Panama City Beach residents and tourists alike, relief is finally in sight for motorists struggling with chronic traffic congestion along U.S. 98.
The Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT) has unveiled detailed plans for the long-awaited widening of the city’s primary east-west highway from four to six lanes, beginning in May 2023. In a public information meeting on January 27, officials met with local business owners and residents to explain the three-phase construction project which will cover an 8.54-mile stretch of the highway from the west end of the Hathaway Bridge to Mandy Lane, the entrance to Frank Brown Park.
“We needed this project five or more years ago,” Mayor Mark Sheldon told PCB Life. “Panama City Beach Parkway [U.S. 98] is over its capacity, and it has been for some time. Two additional lanes are desperately needed to enable traffic to keep flowing.”
“This has always been a priority,” FDOT spokesman Ian Satter agreed. He noted that Bay County officials have pressed the department for years to alleviate congestion on the Beach. “Who knows the needs (of county motorists) better than these officials who live here in the community?” he added.
Bay County Chief Infrastructure Officer Keith Bryant recently said that U.S. 98 suffers from the worst congestion of any roadway in the county. As currently designed, the four-lane highway is built to handle 45,000 vehicles each day. But that number rises to as many as 80,000 during the summer months, triggering frequent miles-long traffic jams. Easing that congestion remains the county’s “biggest challenge,” Bryant said.
“We have a failing grade for [traffic] capacity on U.S. 98 now,” Satter said.
Relief will not come without some short-term pain, however. Construction on the first two of three phases – with inevitable traffic delays – will take at least two years to finish.
Plans call for redesigning the current four-lane divided highway to three 11-foot-wide east- and westbound traffic lanes, along with a seven-foot-wide bike lane and a six-foot concrete sidewalk on either side of the roadway. Where deemed necessary, sound-buffering walls are also in the plans. The project will remain within the existing right-of-way by narrowing the existing median strip, Satter said.
Because of that, private property acquisition has been kept to “a minimum,” limited primarily to the purchase of parcels of undeveloped land north and south of the roadway for seven retention ponds, the spokesman said.
As currently planned, the widening project will occur in three phases that FDOT officials have labeled Segments 3, 4 and 5:
• Segment 3 comprises a 2.34-mile stretch of U.S. 98 running east from Mandy Lane to a point just east of Nautilus Road. The current cost estimate is $33 million for this phase.
• Segment 4 is a 2.3-mile section of U.S. 98 running east from Nautilus Street to Richard Jackson Boulevard. It has a current cost estimate of $31 million.
• The final phase, Segment 5, will continue the highway widening and redesign from Richard Jackson Boulevard to the foot of the Hathaway Bridge. Construction of the 3.9-mile stretch is estimated at $60 million. While FDOT will acquire right-of-way funding this year, the final phase has yet to receive construction funding, and the timetable for the start of work has yet to be determined, Satter said.
While the construction itself will temporarily add to motorists’ woes, Satter said the widening project will significantly benefit the Beach. “This will not only address current needs but those twenty to thirty years down the road,” he said.
“These two additional lanes will take some of the stress off this highway,” Sheldon said. “The opening of the second phase of Philip Griffitts Sr. Parkway [north of U.S. 98] helped some, but two additional lanes is what we need for our residents, commuters and visitors.”
For information on the U.S. 98 widening project, go to the FDOT web site at nwflroads.com/projects/217838-3.
A separate improvement project is underway on a 6.9-mile stretch of U.S. 98 on the west end of the Beach from the Walton County line to Heather Drive. This project includes construction of a 10-foot multi-use path on the south side of the highway; a six-foot sidewalk on its north side, fifteen left- and right-hand turn lanes into various side streets, and a redesign of the U.S. 98-Front Beach Road intersection. Estimated completion of that project is in late 2023.
For information on the U.S. 98 west end project, got o the FDOT web site at https://nwflroads.com/projects/437759-1.
