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"Road-resting" its: system-manager contracting in practice.

Article Excerpt
Emerging from downtown St. Petersburg and running directly north along Florida's western coast, U.S. 19 is a primary component of the heavily used traffic system that serves the Tampa-St. Petersburg metropolitan area, one of the fastest-growing regions in he country. As the main route north from the city, U.S. 19 also links the Tampa-St. Pete Metropolitan are a with communities along t e coast as it travels to Tallahassee and beyond to Georgia. In recognition of that central role within the state, the six-lane highway was identified in the 1990s as part of Florid's Interstate Highway System (FIHS) and the stretch of U.S. 19 within St. Petersburg subsequently scheduled for reclassification from major urban artery to urban expressway.

Responding to the new classification, Pinellas County, which contains the city of St. Petersburg, made plans to raise the highway over a series of signalized interchanges within the city, constructing overpasses with funding available from the Congestion Management and Air Quality Act. This presented a challenge for neighboring Pasco County, where U.S. 19 assumes the character of a heavily used suburban arterial with about 30 signal interchanges interrupting the flow of traffic over a 20-mile stretch of highway. With no funding from the Congestion Management and Air Quality Act or any other source available in Pasco County for overpass construction, the solution quickly identified by the Florida DOT and Pasco County officials was to create an ITS project designed to speed traffic flow through the corridor.

TRANSFORMING A MAJOR URBAN CORRIDOR

Florida DOT District 7 staff subsequently applied for and obtained federal funding...