Editorial: Roads

It’s more symbolic than anything at the moment, but the resolution Lee County commissioners passed Tuesday to make the County Road 951 extension a limited-access road is liable to have repercussions for years to come.

Good repercussions, we hope.

The extension of CR 951 — called Collier Boulevard in Collier County — has attracted opposition from the start. Most of that centers around where the extension would cut through — relatively undeveloped land just east of Interstate 75, from where the thoroughfare now ends at Immokalee Road to Alico Road in San Carlos Park. Depending on how far east the road would be aligned, it’s hated by either nearby residents or environmentalists and slow-growthers, who see the road not as salvation from traffic woes but just another opportunity to build new homes, condos and gas stations in an area they think shouldn’t be developed.

They’re half right. The road shouldn’t be used as a wedge to open up vast tracts of land, much of it important for environmental and aquifer-protection reasons, to large-scale development. But make no mistake, the road is desperately needed, if not now, certainly by the time it would be completed in a decade or so. To say otherwise is to deny reality.

At the same time, dangers abound. Build a road and allow wide-scale development along its length and you don’t have a traffic artery, you have another U.S. 41. Or, as opponents never get tired of pointing out, you have Summerlin Road, which provides little traffic relief to anyone because Lee County officials failed to follow through on their promise of only limited accesses.

That’s why, symbolic or not, Tuesday’s unanimous vote on the resolution calling for the extension to have only limited access was important. County commissioners blew it on Summerlin; so far, they’re driving down the right road on CR 951.