Editorial: Interstate 75/Immokalee Road

When the rezoning for a Super Target store was successfully sought in February 2005, the project was pitched to Collier County commissioners as a boon rather than a bane to traffic. Developers and even county engineers said the project would set aside land for needed intersection improvements at Immokalee Road and Interstate 75.

Roadwork was supposed to have started by the end of last year and, by now, be a year and a half from completion.

Since then, everything has gone — pardon the expression — downhill.

First the Federal Highway Administration said it wants the state rather than the county to do the job. In view of the widening of I-75 coming to that area anyway, that made a measure of sense.

Yet, a contractor for the overall Collier/Lee I-75 widening work won’t be aboard for another year, and we do not know how the intersection will rank in the overall project’s hierarchy of deadlines.

The slow movement of the bureaucracy has already driven the interchange cost estimates from $5 million to $25 million, with the county paying for about half.

It is clear some of the decision-making bureaucrats do not have to live, drive or pay taxes around here.

What is already a mind-numbing traffic mess — the perfect storm of excess traffic, piecemeal road construction and the addition of a Wal-Mart Super Center — is going to get worse before it gets better.

One of these days, against all odds, roads will come before new stores and homes.

Super Target, which enjoys permission to have opened as early as April, is only in the site-clearing stages rather than open for business. It could be worse.