Palm Beach County faces big decision, big costs ahead on...

This would change the face of Palm Beach County. It will be expensive to construct just one of these interchanges at major intersections. The MPO is talking about the potential of six of these throughout the county. The cost estimates also do not include right-of-way acquisition, which would be substantial. Ultimately, the County Commission could make a policy that they are not going to pursue this option, but what are you going to do about car travel in the future?

Have you been out to State Road 7 and Forest Hill Boulevard? Scary. Click title for link to Joe Capozzi's article.

For example, the intersection of Okeechobee Boulevard and Military Trail would have 132,800 daily vehicle trips in 2035, according to MPO projections. Today, there are 100,232 daily trips through that intersection.

Forest Hill Boulevard and State Road 7 is the largest “at-grade” intersection in the county, with 31 total lanes (including turning lanes) approaching from all four directions. There are 94,177 daily trips through that intersection today, and the 2035 projections call for 105,000 trips.

“It needs to not be a do-nothing approach,” Uhren [Nick Uhren, Palm Beach Metropolitan Planning Organization’s executive director] said after the meeting when asked about resistance to urban interchanges.

“But at the same time, when you’ve got bottlenecks for cars, there’s not an alternative. Unless you can convince people to get out of their cars, you cannot provide the capacity of an urban interchange in another fashion to move that many cars.”