Editorial: Interstate 75 widening

Good: The basic widening of Interstate 75 in Collier and Lee counties is set to begin within a year or two. State and federal funding appears all lined up and ready to go.

Not so good: The addition of two toll lanes, each way, is several years away. It appears Florida Rep. Mike Davis' idea to beef up the contract and have the toll lanes widened at the same time the other, no-extra-charge lanes are being added, is more difficult than it seems.

Unacceptable: Delaying construction of the entire package until the toll lanes can be done.

That idea was floated the other day by a panel appointed to oversee the toll aspect of the project.

Pardon the transportation cliché, but that would be putting the cart before the horse — or making the horse wait for the cart to catch up.

Surely there is something else in the works here. Perhaps this is the Southwest Florida Expressway Authority's hardball way of giving the eventual contractor of the no-extra-charge lanes — by themselves a nearly half-billion dollar proposition — an incentive to come through and make a bid on the toll lanes at the same time. Surely this is a savvy business ploy.

The idea, at face value, surely makes no sense to the rank-and-file motorist who has already been stuck on I-75 for years.

With or without a planned new road from Fort Myers to near Orlando — another toll road nicknamed the Heartland Parkway — a fully fortified I-75 needs to get rocking and rolling ASAP in Collier and Lee.