TAMPA, Fla. (WFTS) — Jason Marlowe's neighborhood has everything a normal neighborhood would offer; except for what lies at the end of the street. Straight ahead, lies a concrete wall. It's purpose: a sound barrier between the neighborhood and I-275.
"I already hear it. I already breathed it. I recognize that. And I recognize that I bought my house, where I bought my house, and it is what it is," he said.
Now Marlowe, who serves as the Vice-President for the Southeast Seminole Heights Civic Association, and his neighbors fear what they already deal with is about to get worse.
InJune, the Hillsborough County Transportation Planning Organization met. The intial plan was to discuss a noise wall project targetting I-275 from Hillsborough to Bearss.
TPO Board member and Hillsborough County Commissioner Joshua Wostal, however, made a motion to convert that portion into a widening project, that would instead add lanes on both sides.
"We have a lot of different diverging types of communities in Hillsbororough County. Pretty dynamic and types of really Urban really rural some suburban some in between," he said at that meeting.
The motion passed in an 8-7 vote. Wostal mentioned he wasn't convinced at the time that enough people would side with the neighborhoods.
"It's five comments for 1.55-1.6 million people so that doesn't really give a good overview. To take one of them saying they don't need more lanes and cars but if you look on the other side of the quotes, it specifically says major roads need to grow with the amount of traffic. So those two contradict one another because there are a lot of different types of communities. The fact of the matter is that by far the mass percent of the population is never going to leave their car. I couldn't imagine a train full of cowboy hats from Plant City. I think the last time that probably happened was when there were cowboys walking around everywhere," he said.
TPO recently completed a community survey to see what most of our residents care most about when it comes to transportation.
4,635 people participated in the survey. The majority ranked newer, faster transit as number one. Extend or add lanes to major roads averaged fourth most important.
However, when asked specifically about road widening projects, the I-275 one was the only to receive a favorable approval rating.
Marlowe says his frustrations lie in the lack of communication from Wostal before bringing the topic to a vote.
"I think part of the issue with so much of what's going on is the underhanded nature of the motion made by Commissioner Wostal. There was no consultation with our neighborhood. No one came in to ask us how we felt about having our quality of life reduced, and this man proclaims to be a county wide Commissioner that has to serve the all you know, the whole county that means us too. We're real people. We're real families that have real desires to build a future here. And why would we want to do that if we're going to be disregarded by our elected officials when we make our voices, you know, heard loud and clear," Marlowe said.
Since then, the community members have continued to speak out.
This is what a TPO Staff member said in an update during a September meeting:
"We have received several e-mails expressing the [following point], members of the community do not support the road widening of I-275 due to the negative impacts it will have, such as environmental harm, exasperated traffic, and reduced property value in surrounding areas."
But Tampa Bay is growing and growing fast. Marlowe doesn't contest that. He says this is a prime opportunity to invest in other forms of transportation.
"We are a growing community. We have thousands of people pouring into the city like literally every year. But to that point, why should we waste almost half a billion dollars building one northbound and one southbound lane when we could invest that in activating the CSX tracks to help folks get to and from throughout the city. We could expand the Streetcar. We could make HART a more fully functional organization," he offered.
He adds that other cities have proven more lanes aren't the answer.
"All of these things are available to us with the same kind of money that we could waste on doubling down on the same bad practices that haven't worked in every other city around the world. Now ask Houston how six lanes each way has helped solve their traffic problem. One more lane is not going to do it," he said.
The conversation isn't exactly a new one.
A nearly identical widening project was proposed years prior in 2015. Like this go around, residents in surrounding communities raised their concerns. It was eventually abandoned in 2021.
"This neighborhood and the neighborhoods around us, we were already a sleeping giant. We organized against this, and we defeated this proposal over the last 10 years. We're more than ready to do it again. And frankly, we've already had conversations with Civic Associations across the urban core, and we're almost universal opposition to this. And we're gonna make our voices heard, and they're gonna hear us very loudly soon," Marlowe said.
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