Pinellas County Public Works assigned this issue to Pinellas County Public Works - Traffic Engineering

This individual has exaggerated the traffic mess which has not gone on forever and is almost done near Ridgemoor. Ever been in a gridlock mess on 19 to compare? The big problem is widening East Lake Rd. to six lanes and how to fund it because traffic continues to grow from Pasco County via Trinity developments,etc. The County Planning Office has no short term fix and tweaking the lights is very difficult aside from maybe those left turn arrows.

Whatever Mark...I drive this route every day and it sucks when Duke has been blocking lanes.

Yes Duke has been working / blocking off lanes off and on for the last 3+ months - not sure what your timeframe you think it has been - no schedule posted that I know of so you basically have to drive into it to find out if you are screwed or not.

And from what I can tell they mostly only work during the day and not very many nights or weekends for a few hours at a time.

That area already is congested badly due to the merging of 3 to 2 lanes and when it goes from 3 to 1 it really backs up - just like you said Pinellas has a big problem there but yet they are ok with it going from 3 to 1 for many days?

I'm glad to hear they are almost done and not going to be doing this all the way North on East Lake until the end of time.

By the way, i don't think funding is the biggest issue with widening East Lake to 3 lanes each way - I believe the biggest issue is that that part of the road where it is 2 lanes now is designated a "constricted" road thus that can't widen it past 2 lanes each way. This was probably done 25+ years ago when that part of Pinellas was being developed for residential housing - smart move by those at that time to prevent / control East Lake from becoming a 5 lane each way speedway someday.

I think ultimately Pinellas will just need to finish putting overpasses all the way up to Tarpon Blvd to get rid of alot of Trinity / Pasco traffic on East Lake as most will then just go 19 and cut over at Tarpon. But of course nobody living onTarpon is going to like all that new traffic so that is another discussion....

Let the Pinellas County Planning Office like I did know that you want something improved about East Lake Rd. Duke Energy has to make improvements and can't do this work at night and I did see them work at least one Saturday via the contractor crew they hired to string new lines. I am a Duke shareholder and ratepayer and I have plenty to complain about their Florida management but this is one of the few gridlock situations I can live with as it was a temporary situation. Trouble is the gridlock will get worse just from traffic increasing and again the County does not want to expand lanes as it will be expensive and guess what,create lane merging gridlock,again. The original plan for a six lane stretch of East Lake Rd. was protested by the seniors in the area developments so it did not happen. Now,we all suffer at rush hours and beyond.

The Pinellas County Traffic Advisory is available online at http://www.pinellascounty.org/PublicWorks/work_locations.htm., this is a link to all reported road work and lane/road closures in Pinellas County. It is updated weekly.

The 12/31/2015 issue shows Duke Energy will be working in this area until February 1, 2016.

Well, traffic increases when school starts, and increases even more a couple months later when snowbirds come.

So what did Pinellas do? They said ok that Duke can do this 4+ month drawn out periodic lane closure here at a known congested traffic area during peak traffic time for the year (instead of telling them to do it in the summertime when traffic is lighter or more work had to be done at night / weekends). That is what I'm really irritated at.

Also wanted to add that while there is a "advisory" for lane closures for this issue, it just says "to expect daily lane closures" but no specific days it will happen.

So I appreciate the link, but it is essentially worthless in this situation since it is going on for many months as I have to basically drive into this area to find out if there actually be a lane closure that day or not.

I think Pinellas should have done a much better job managing the timing of this as well as reporting the actual days of lane closures.