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Project Description

Financial Project Numbers 258398 & 258399
Project Length: 2 miles
Construction Cost: $110 million
Contractor: PCL Civil Constructors, Inc.
Start Date: August 13, 2007
Completed: April 28, 2010

About this Project
The Florida Department of Transportation's (FDOT) contractor completed (Sept. 14, 2009) making capacity and safety improvements to northbound Interstate 275 from Himes Avenue to the Hillsborough River in Tampa, Florida. The project reconstructed a 3-lane roadway into a 4-lane roadway.

The new 4-lane northbound I-275 is located to the outside of the existing roadway and the area where the former roadway was located will eventually be a grassy median. The median area will be reserved for future transportation needs. However, a portion of the existing northbound lanes will remain in place to be used for traffic during the rebuilding of the southbound lanes in a future project.

All crossing streets (Himes Ave., MacDill Ave., Armenia Ave., Howard Ave., Rome Ave., Willow Ave. and North Blvd) remain similar as before construction began.

The project improvements also included 8-foot noise walls (primarily barrier-mounted) next to densely developed residential areas and design treatments that complement the historic neighborhood.

Improvement highlights for this portion of northbound I-275 included:

• Increased to a four-lane highway.
• Provided a median reserved for future transportation needs.
• Reconstructed bridges and improve height clearances.
• Increased median width.
• Created safer clear zones and recovery zones.
• Improved lighting.
• Improve drainage.

Added Work

A contract change was made to begin a small portion of work on southbound I-275 in this area. The old northbound lanes were converted for use by southbound traffic. The southbound traffic was switched to the old northbound lanes between Willow Avenue and Himes Avenue on April 3, 2010. The work consisted of moving I-275 southbound traffic onto the old northbound lanes, separating exiting traffic for Howard/Armenia avenues and Himes Avenue onto the old southbound lanes, and building a new left entrance ramp from Armenia for southbound I-275 entry. The transition areas for moving traffic to and from the old northbound lanes are located between Willow and Rome for the east end, and just east of Himes on the west end. New overhead sign structures were erected to direct traffic and the old northbound lanes were resurfaced.

This realignment has improved traffic flow on southbound I-275 as traffic exiting to Howard/Armenia and Himes is taken off the mainline travel lanes sooner. One of the first steps of the next I-275 project (completion of southbound lanes from the Hillsborough River bridge to Himes Avenue) called for southbound traffic to be moved onto the old northbound lanes, so the added construction to this project performed that step one project early, allowing construction on the next project to begin sooner once a new construction contract is awarded.

Lane Closure Hours were:
* Mainline I-275 and ramps: 10:00 p.m. to 5:30 a.m. Sunday through Thursday nights as needed.

* Side streets (daytime): 9:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. Monday through Thursday as needed. (MacDill Ave., Himes Ave., Armenia Ave., Howard Ave., Rome Ave., Willow Ave., Doyle Carlton Dr.).

* Side streets (nighttime): 7:00 p.m. to 6 a.m. Sunday through Thursday nights as needed.(MacDill Ave., Himes Ave., Armenia Ave., Howard Ave., Rome Ave., Willow Ave., Doyle Carlton Dr.).

I-275 Corridor Video
A video of what the completed I-275 corridor will look like from the Howard Frankland Bridge to downtown Tampa, including this project section, is available through this link: Click here to view the video.