A guide for Bexley neighbors · Updated September 26, 2026
Hello, I'm Patrick. I put this guide together from public documents on the Pasco county site. I'm not affiliated with Pasco County or the MPO, I'm not on the HOA or CDD. While personally, I don't want this road to be built, my aim is not to convince you one way or the other. Instead, I aim to keep my neighbors informed and encourage them to attend the workshop. Every figure, and every statement marked with a small †, can be tapped to see the document it comes from and to tell me whether it matches, and I'll do my best to fix anything that's wrong.
Public Workshop #3 is your next chance to be heard
The workshop has happened — comments are still open
Thursday, September 24
5:00 – 7:00 p.m.
Starkey Ranch Theatre Library Cultural Center
12118 Lake Blanche Drive, Odessa, FL 33556
Written comments are due Thursday, October 8, 2026. Details in section 9.
Comments received by Thursday 8 October go into the study record. Three ways to send one:
Online · pasco.rja.revize.com/forms/11000
Email · pkontses@mypasco.net
Post · Panos Kontses, P.E., Pasco County, 5418 Sunset Road, New Port Richey, FL 34652
The county published several traffic boards for this study: what these streets carry now, what they carry in 2050 if the Rangeland extension is not built, and what they carry if it is. Switch between them below. Colour and thickness are daily traffic; the letters are intersection grades at the evening peak; the percentages compare each view with the one to its left.
Based on the county’s existing-traffic board with data from 2023. The board doesn’t number the Suncoast Parkway or US 41, so those two use FDOT’s own counts from 2025: the Suncoast at a day south of SR 54 and north of it, and US 41 at .
The county calls this the no-build option, though it isn't really an option. These projections do not represent nothing being built — the model includes every project in the long range plan, Bud Bexley Parkway among them, so the corridor still joins up. Only the Rangeland extension is missing from this projection.
Based on the county’s design boards for Alternatives A, D and E, which all have the same traffic estimates.
County traffic boards shown at Public Workshop #3, 24 September 2026, read from the boards themselves, and FDOT’s 2025 traffic counts for the Suncoast Parkway and US 41 (Today view only). Streets and stretches drawn in grey have no figure on any of the county’s boards.
See the full timeline, including every change order and what’s planned →
Figures with a dotted underline come straight from the county’s documents. Tap one to see which document, or to tell me it’s wrong. The box also says whether the figure has been checked by AI or verified by a human. See every figure and its source →
What's in here
Pasco's long range transportation plan designates a Freight Priority Network, the roads the county plans for the movement of goods. Rangeland Boulevard, Bud Bexley Parkway and Caliente Boulevard are all part of that plan, and the plan draws its freight goals from the state's Florida Mobility and Trade Plan. The county notes it has no freight plan of its own yet.
The designation earns the project a point in the 2050 plan's project scoring — the rule reads "project falls along the freight priority network — 1 point." The road is also designed for a vehicle, a medium-sized semitrailer, meaning one can make the turns without leaving the pavement.
The county's view is that the designation does not imply heavy truck use, and that many state and county roads carry it. They report about of daily traffic is trucks on the existing segments of this corridor against about on the parallel stretch of SR 54, and expect the corridor's share to rise once the segments connect but stay below SR 54's — and above the local street network. A design-year truck percentage for the finished corridor still has not been published.
The Rangeland study covers 3.4 miles between Cattle Gap Trail and Bexley Village Drive. The county's workshop mailer sets out two cross-sections, both four lanes divided — the difference is the width of the median, and therefore the total width of land the road occupies.
For a sense of width: 124 to 170 feet is the land a six- to eight-lane highway corridor typically occupies once you count medians, paths and drainage. The driving surface is a smaller part of it than most people expect.
One thing the drawings leave out, which the county pointed out and which I had misread: the cross-sections exclude the grassed strip between the sidewalks and shared-use paths and the right-of-way line. That strip is narrower in the wide-median section, which means the median can widen without the total right-of-way widening. A 44-foot median does not, by itself, mean the county takes more land. See correction 10.
The project overview notes that if Florida's Turnpike Enterprise builds a Rangeland Boulevard interchange with the Suncoast Parkway, a six-lane segment would be required from South Branch Boulevard to west of Bexley Village Drive. The Turnpike ran a PD&E study from 2023 to mid-2025 that evaluated exactly that interchange.
Two organisations have said something about this, and they are answering different questions. Pasco County's position, in September 2026: "No interchange or six-lane section is currently being considered for approval in the Rangeland Blvd Route Study." The county adds that no probability of a future interchange or widening can be estimated, that the wider median is being considered only because it is a low-cost way to make later widening cheaper, and that whether any of that happens is for future county leaders to decide, whichever alternative is chosen.
Florida's Turnpike, which is the agency that would actually build the interchange, is more specific:
Two conditions sit in that sentence, and both are worth reading closely.
"Demonstrates stakeholder support." The interchange is neither cancelled nor approved. It is waiting on evidence of public support, and the county's route study is the process that would produce that evidence. This cuts in every direction: if you want the interchange, this is where you say so; if you don't, the same is true. Alternatives B and C were dropped from this study for lack of public support for a Suncoast interchange, so the mechanism is not hypothetical.
"Will operate acceptably … through the year 2050." The intersection named appears to be the Bexley Village Drive roundabout, which the county's published forecast already shows falling from A today to D in 2050 — and that is with the road built and no interchange. (Without the road at all it is forecast at F.) The Turnpike is asking the county to show the intersection still works with interchange traffic added on top of the build case. No such analysis has been published.
Is the county pursuing the Suncoast interchange, and what would count as demonstrating stakeholder support? Has the Bud Bexley Parkway / Bexley Village Drive intersection been tested with the interchange in place through 2050, and can we see it? And if six lanes are triggered, how much wider does the corridor get — no cross-section or right-of-way width has been published for that case.
This is an old project. It has been in the Pasco County Comprehensive Plan since , and in long range transportation plans adopted by the county's MPO before 2024. It is now in the route study stage, which is choosing between Alternatives A, D and E. After that come design, right-of-way purchase and construction — and money for all three is already set aside in the county's capital plan.
Different studies happen at different stages, which matters if you want to know when a particular concern gets examined. Here is where each one lands.
The project lists five goals: regional connectivity, easing congestion, evacuation and emergency response, secondary access, and safety. Traffic has been analysed and published, and environmental effects — noise, wetlands, species, contamination, historic sites — are screened in the alternatives matrix. But safety, evacuation and connectivity have no row in that matrix and no published analysis, even though safety is one of the five stated goals.
Evacuation is normally measured with clearance times, safety with crash data, connectivity with detour distances. How were the three alternatives compared on those, and can that comparison be published?
Four of the five goals have no published measurement of any kind. Congestion has been analysed and published. Connectivity, evacuation, secondary access and safety have not. Which of them will be measured before an alternative is chosen, and how?
While most of the Bexley discussion has been about a specific 3.4 mile segment, the adopted long range plan contains two more segments that continue straight on from it, all with four lanes and the same freight network designation, connecting Rangeland to US 41 and Ehren Cutoff.
The figure below lists related project numbers from Pasco's plan.
| 114.2 | Rangeland Blvd — Cattle Gap Trl to Bexley Village Dr · new 4-lane · this studyRoute study · Workshop #3 on 24 Sept 2026 |
| 114.3 | Bud Bexley Pkwy — Bexley Village Dr to US 41 · new 4-laneRoute study underway since Jan 2025 — but the county is studying only east of Sunlake Blvd, about 2.6 of the plan’s 5.43 miles |
| 114.4 | Caliente Blvd — US 41 to CR 583 (Ehren Cutoff) · new 4-laneNo project page · plan schedules its PD&E for 2041–2050 |
| 114.1 | Rangeland Blvd — Starkey Blvd to Long Spur · widen to 4 lanesNo project page · plan schedules its PD&E for 2025–2030 |
| 118.1 | Suncoast Pkwy — SR 52 to Rangeland Blvd · widen to 6 lanesPD&E study by Florida’s Turnpike, 2023 to mid-2025 — it evaluated a new interchange at Rangeland Blvd, now suspended pending public support (section 2) |
| 124.1 | Bexley Ranch Blvd — Rangeland Blvd to Sunlake Blvd · new 4-laneNo project page found |
| 126.1 | Bexley Village Dr — Mentmore Blvd to Rangeland BlvdNo project page found |
| 127.1 | Meadowbrook Dr — Mentmore Blvd to SR 54 · widen to 4 lanesNo project page found |
| 131.1 | Drexel Rd — Rangeland Blvd to Lake Patience Dr · new 2-laneNo project page found |
Only three of the nine have a public project page. Rangeland Boulevard and Bud Bexley Parkway each have one on the county's site, and both are route studies running right now. The Suncoast Parkway widening has a Florida's Turnpike page, and its PD&E study — which evaluated a new interchange at Rangeland Boulevard — finished in mid-2025. For the remaining six I could not find a project page at all, so the only stage information available is what the long range plan schedules.
Oddly, the adopted plan schedules the PD&E study for Bud Bexley Parkway in 2041–2050, and for Rangeland Boulevard in the same band. Both are being studied today instead. Whatever the reason, the corridor is moving considerably faster than the regional plan said it will. I don't know why.
None of this is secret, but it isn't really spelled out in the workshop mailer either, and it changes how the study should be read. The county's own description is that connecting the existing and planned segments of Rangeland Boulevard, Bud Bexley Parkway and Tower Road turns them into a regional collector. The existing Bud Bexley segments, they note, are isolated today and carry local traffic only.
That phrase stuck with me, so I went looking for what a "regional collector" actually is. The phrase "regional collector" does not appear in Florida statute, in the Federal Highway Administration's classification system, or in Pasco's own land development code. The word "collector" on its own is defined, though, along with two other categories. Florida Statutes 334.03 sorts roads by how they behave rather than by how big they are:
Those don't seem like particularly useful definitions, but the federal system uses the same ladder, splitting collectors into major and minor.
A road's classification decides which design standards apply to it and — under Pasco's own access management code — how far apart driveways and median openings have to be and where turn lanes are required. It is one of the more consequential labels a road can carry.
All of that to say, it is worth asking why this project is designated as a collector and not arterial. A collector is supposed to be moderate in volume, trip length and speed. What section 5 describes is 3.4 miles of new four-lane road carrying vehicles a day, bridging the Suncoast Parkway, completing a continuous ten-mile route out to US 41 and Ehren Cutoff, and listed on the freight priority network. That sounds more like the arterial definition than the collector one.
Though if it is an arterial, it is a minor one. Florida separates a principal arterial — one serving "the major centers of activity of an urban area, the highest traffic volume corridors, and the longest trip purpose" — from a minor arterial that "interconnects with and augments" one of those and carries shorter trips. At vehicles a day this is nowhere near the highest-volume corridors here. SR 54 runs 63,500 to 93,000 and the Suncoast Parkway 75,500 to 93,000. This road would feed them, not be one of them.
But I don't think the choice is arbitrary. I imagine functional classification is assigned through a formal process, not by whoever writes the project description. I may well be wrong about it. But it seems a fair thing to ask: what classification will Rangeland Boulevard carry once it is built, who decides that, and has it been decided already?
What it would not change is the money. In an urban area collectors are already eligible for federal highway funds, so moving up a rung unlocks nothing, and it triggers no environmental review either, because that attaches to federal decisions and there are none here. Nor can anyone force a change: reclassification goes through FDOT with the county and the MPO both signing on and the Federal Highway Administration approving, which makes the county one of the parties whose agreement is needed to reclassify its own road. What the label does carry is intent. Classification is meant to record what a road actually does — so if the county expects an arterial, that is a statement about the road it expects to have in 2050.
This section used to ask which of these projects were in the modelled 2050 network behind the traffic numbers. The county has answered it: the Tampa Bay Regional Planning Model "incorporates all roadway projects in the MPO's long range plan," naming Bud Bexley Parkway specifically.
So the forecasts in section 5 are not the effect of a 3.4-mile road. They are what these streets carry once the whole corridor exists, alongside every other project in the adopted plan. That is the right way to read them, and it is worth holding on to when someone quotes a single number at you. See correction 8.
Average Annual Daily Traffic — the number of vehicles that pass a point on the road in a typical day, counting both directions together. It is the figure printed beside each street on the county's traffic boards.
Because it is an average across the whole year, it smooths out the differences between weekdays and weekends and between seasons. A street with an AADT of 16,500 carries more than that on a busy Thursday and less on a quiet Sunday; more in the summer than in the winter. It also says nothing about the peak hours, which is when traffic is actually felt. That aspect is only included in the LOS ratings for intersections.
Initially, I could only show you two columns: what these streets carry today, and what they are forecast to carry in 2050 if the road is built. That comparison mixes twenty-five years of ordinary growth in with the project's own effect, and there was no way to separate them.
The county has now supplied the third column — the no-build forecast, which is what 2050 looks like if nothing is built at all.
| Street | Today | 2050 no-build | 2050 Alt A | Build vs no-build |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bexley Village Dr — toward SR 54 | −10,000 | |||
| Ballantrae Blvd — toward SR 54 | −7,000 | |||
| Bexley Village Dr — by the roundabout | −2,000 | |||
| Bexley Village Dr — north leg | −1,000 | |||
| Broad Porch Run | +2,000 | |||
| Bud Bexley Pkwy | +9,600 | |||
| Rangeland Blvd (the new road) | — | — | new road |
All three columns are read from the county's traffic boards shown at Public Workshop #3 on 24 September 2026: existing traffic (2023 counts), 2050 no-build, and 2050 build covering Alternatives A, D and E together. In the no-build there is no new road — the existing stub east of Gunn Highway carries about 2,000 a day.
Traffic roughly triples on these streets either way. Bexley Village Drive by the roundabout goes from today to in 2050 with no project at all. Nearly all of the increase this page has been describing happens whether or not Rangeland Boulevard is extended. The county said as much.
Bexley Village Drive toward SR 54 carries a day in the no-build and with the road built — ten thousand fewer vehicles. Ballantrae drops seven thousand. What the project does is move that traffic onto the new road. That is essentially the case the county is making for building it.
The trade is visible in the same data. Rangeland Boulevard carries vehicles a day that are not there today, and Bud Bexley Parkway goes from in the no-build to . So this is redistribution plus growth — not traffic conjured out of nothing, but not relief either. The question is not whether there will be more traffic. It is which streets carry it.
Level of Service — a letter grade from A to F describing how much delay you experience at an intersection. A is free-flowing and each step down means a longer wait. F means the intersection cannot clear the vehicles arriving at it during the peak: the queue builds faster than it empties.
The county grades each intersection twice, once for the morning peak and once for the evening, and usually writes them together as one letter with the other in parentheses — so "D (F)" means D in the morning and F in the evening. This page shows the evening grade throughout.
Every intersection in the study area is graded with a Level of Service. Eleven appear in all three cases. Of those, ten are worse in 2050 than they are today, whether or not the road is built. Only the Cattle Gap Trail roundabout holds its grade, and it holds either way.
Set the two 2050 cases against each other and it reads differently again. Alternative A is better than the no-build at six of the eleven, the same at five, and worse at none. Two of those six are large: Rangeland Boulevard at Gunn Highway is F in the evening peak if nothing is built and C if this is, and the Bexley Village Drive roundabout is F without the project and D with it.
Three intersections sit at grade F with the project. Six sit at F without it. Grade F means the intersection cannot clear the vehicles arriving during the peak — the queue builds faster than it empties — this detail is important.
Where does the traffic that leaves Bexley Village Drive actually go? Ten thousand vehicles a day come off that street in the build case and onto the new road. Which neighborhoods sit alongside the road that receives them, and have those residents been shown the same comparison?
And can we see the no-build boards for the intersections too? The county supplied the 2050 no-build traffic and level-of-service figures in September 2026, after I asked. They should be on a board at the workshop next to the build figures, because without them none of the build numbers mean anything.
If this is a freight route, does that mean lots of trucks? Heavy trucks dominate road noise even when they are a small share of the traffic, so how a road sounds depends more on the truck percentage than on the total number of vehicles.
An earlier version of this page said no truck figures had been published for this corridor. The county has since supplied some. About 4% of daily traffic is trucks on the existing segments of the Rangeland Boulevard corridor, against about 12% on the parallel stretch of SR 54. They expect the corridor's share to rise once the segments are connected, but to stay below SR 54's — and, in their words, above the local roadway network. The road is designed for a WB-40 vehicle, a medium-sized semitrailer.
What still has not been published is a number: the truck percentage the 2050 forecast actually assumes for the finished corridor. Existing counts on a disconnected road are not the same thing as a design-year assumption for a connected one, and the noise analysis depends on it. That is a question worth asking the BCC.
The route study's alternatives evaluation matrix scores "potential impacts to noise conditions" as for the no-build option and originally (in January 2025) scored for both build alternatives it compared, A and B. The September 2026 matrix rates all three remaining alternatives — A, D and E — , noting two noise-impacted areas on the corridor.
The county explained the High rating simply: no roadway exists there today, so any road raises noise levels along the whole corridor from a baseline of essentially nothing. The justification that I heard for changing it to Medium was that "only two small areas are affected." The county has chosen to follow the Federal Highway Administration's procedures for measuring and predicting highway traffic noise, and under those procedures, noise mitigation measures were only found to be reasonable and feasible for one short segment of the project near the Bexley roundabout.
I don't know what the underlying numbers are: which homes were modelled as receptors, what sound levels they were predicted to experience, and which test each location failed. Again, worth asking about.
Where are the noise receptors, and what were the modelled levels at each? Mitigation was found reasonable and feasible for one short segment. For everywhere else, which test did the location fail — reasonableness or feasibility — and by how much?
What truck percentage does the 2050 forecast assume for the completed corridor? The September matrix gives A, D and E the same Medium noise rating — were they modelled separately, and do the predicted levels at any homes differ between them?
The county presented updated estimates at Workshop #3 on 24 September. They are higher than the figures this page carried before, and for the first time all three surviving alternatives are priced.
| September 2026 estimate | Construction | Total | Per mile |
|---|---|---|---|
| Alternative A | $44.0M | ||
| Alternative D | $44.4M | ||
| Alternative E | $46.3M |
So D's wider median costs about $1.5 million more than A, and E's wider median plus its extra pedestrian underpass about $7.8 million more. That is the first published price on the difference between the three, and it is worth having before anyone is asked which they prefer.
| Alternative A, September 2026 | Cost |
|---|---|
| Construction | |
| Design (10%) | |
| Construction engineering and inspection (8%) | |
| Land for the roadway | |
| Land for stormwater ponds | |
| Land for floodplain compensation | |
| Wetland mitigation | |
| Total |
Land now comes to $23.3 million, about 16% of the total, up from roughly 10% in January. The board notes right-of-way costs were re-estimated in September 2026.
The January 2025 matrix put Build A at . It would be easy to say the estimate has risen by a third, and I am not going to say that, because the two totals may not be counting the same things.
January's printed total is exactly equal to its construction, design and inspection lines added together. Add its other listed components — land acquisition and wetland mitigation — and you get $129.53 million. September's total includes all of those and adds up exactly. So either January's "Total" left the land out, or one of the two boards has an arithmetic problem. Measured like for like the rise is nearer 16%; taking the printed totals at face value it is 34%.
Two of the matrix's qualitative ratings were lowered between January and September. Noise went from to , and contamination from to . At the workshop I was told the noise change followed from mitigation being warranted at only two short sections, and that the qualitative rating is ultimately the county's to set. No explanation for the contamination change has been published.
Every figure in the same matrix that can be counted moved the other way:
The wetlands figure matters beyond the cost. A Section 404 permit from the Army Corps of Engineers is the one step in this project that is genuinely federal, and it turns on the acreage of wetland impact. That acreage is now 41% larger than the number this page has been carrying. Potential relocations are still zero.
over miles is $44.0 million a mile. That is worth a second look, because it is the same figure I had already worked out from the long range plan's year-of-expenditure total. The route study has now arrived at it independently, from a different direction.
Set against the other road projects in the same plan, that puts this segment eighth of forty, where the median is $10.38 million a mile. The next segment of the same corridor, Bud Bexley Parkway, comes to $14.83 million a mile in the same document. The county says the comparison is unfair:
That is a disagreement about what the number means rather than a claim that the arithmetic is wrong, so the figure stays and their objection sits beside it. It is a fair point as far as it goes: structures are expensive, and a road carrying two of them should cost more per mile than one carrying none. What would settle it is knowing how many of the other thirty-nine projects carry structures of their own, and several of them cross water or rail. I have not done that count, and I am not going to promise it before the comment deadline. Until somebody does, treat the ranking as a question rather than an answer.
On 14 September the Tampa Bay Beacon reported the project at $77 million — $38.5 million from the county and $38.5 million sought from the state. Against the county's own September estimate of $150 million, that is not the cost of this project; it looks more like the TRIP request counted twice. The gap is the part worth holding on to: the $4.5 million state appropriation and the $38.5 million TRIP request together cover under a third of the estimate, and the rest has to come from somewhere.
Four separate pots of money point at this road, and they do not describe the same project or the same timetable. Taking them in order of how settled they are:
| Source | Amount | Status |
|---|---|---|
| State appropriation — LFIR 1718, Sen. Hooper | $4.5M | Signed into law, not vetoed. Available since 1 July 2026. |
| County capital plan — design | FY 2026 | Appropriated. First year of an adopted CIP is the capital budget. |
| County capital plan — right-of-way 2027, construction 2029 | — | Programmed, not appropriated. Out-years are estimates. |
| TRIP request — state, 50% county match | $38.5M | Requested. Added to the MPO's priority list 3 Sept 2026. Not awarded. |
| Regional plan — cost-feasible, PD&E only | $2.79M | Scheduled for 2041–2050. Twenty years behind the county. |
Senator Hooper filed a Local Funding Initiative Request — Senate form 1718, House form 2969 — for the Rangeland Boulevard Extension. The House and Senate agreed it at the full $4,500,000 in conference on 24 May 2026, under the Department of Transportation's Local Transportation Projects line. It is not on the Governor's 2026 veto list, so it survived into law and has been available since the state's fiscal year began on 1 July. What it pays for — design, land, or construction — has not been published, and the county still has to accept it through a grant agreement.
"Funded in the CIP" is doing more work than it looks. The years above come from the MPO's 2025 List of Project Priorities, which records "Design funded FY 2026 in CIP, ROW funded FY 2027 in CIP, CST Funded in FY 2029 in CIP." That is the MPO restating what the county told it, not the county's adopted budget. And Pasco's own capital plan explains the difference: "Upon adoption of the CIP, funds are appropriated for those projects identified in the first year of the plan" — the remaining years are estimates. So the design money is a real appropriation. The right-of-way and construction money is a plan.
The county’s capital plan puts a figure on each year. Pasco’s adopted FY 2026 budget carries a line for the road, printed as “Rangeland Bl (E of Gunn Hwy to Bexl”, with an amount for every year to 2030 and beyond:
| County capital plan, Rangeland Blvd | Amount |
|---|---|
| FY 2026 — adopted | |
| FY 2027 — proposed | |
| FY 2028 — proposed | |
| FY 2029 — proposed | |
| FY 2030 — proposed | |
| Future years, after FY 2030 | |
| All years | $88.4M |
Only the first year is appropriated; the rest are the county’s planned amounts and can change each budget cycle. The line isn’t broken down by phase, so it doesn’t say which years pay for design, land or construction. The all-years total compares with the September 2026 estimate of for Alternative A.
The regional plan funds a study, in the 2040s. In the 2050 plan's cost-feasible table — the list of what the region expects to be able to afford — project 114.2 receives $2,788,496, all of it for a PD&E study, in the 2041–2050 band. The design, right-of-way and construction columns are blank. The $150.1 million above comes from a different table, the needs list, which prices projects whether or not the money exists. Since the county says the route study is that process (correction 5), the county is running it roughly two decades ahead of the schedule the adopted plan sets and funds. Probably a good reason for that, but I don't know what it is.
Federal law requires every state to publish an annual listing of federal funds obligated by MPO area. FDOT publishes Pasco's. The current one covers FY 2025 and lists 30 highway projects and 2 planning projects totalling $29,942,324. Rangeland Boulevard is not among them, and neither is its project number, 454569-1. It does not appear in FDOT's inventory of Pasco County projects either.
Three words get used interchangeably and shouldn't. Programmed means it sits in a plan. Committed means someone intends to pay. Obligated means the federal government has formally authorised the money and it is legally encumbered. Only the third creates federal duties.
One qualification: In the long range plan the project's fund source is "P", which the key defines as "STBG, CRP, Other Roads, Local Capital" — a blended bucket that does contain federal programmes. But the only thing drawn from it is the $2.79 million study allocation in the 2040s, and being programmed against a mixed bucket in a twenty-five-year plan is not an obligation. The neighbouring fund source "D" is the one carrying the classic federal 80/20 split, and this project is not in it.
Why it matters: federal money or a federal approval is what triggers a federal environmental review. Without one, there is no federal decision to appeal and no federal agency with a say. The exception is wetlands — the matrix records 33.93 acres affected, and filling wetlands needs a permit from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which is a federal decision with its own public process. That is the one federal lever in this project.
What do the updated construction estimates come to, and how much of the cost is the two bridges? What is the $4.5 million state appropriation for, and has the county executed a grant agreement to accept it?
Design money was appropriated for a fiscal year that ends on 30 September, while this study has not yet chosen between A, D and E. Did design work begin before an alternative was selected, or did the money go unspent? And which Board of County Commissioners votes have authorised money for this project, on what dates?
The matrix prices wetland mitigation at an acre. At acres of wetland that comes to about $6.9 million, but the matrix shows . What acreage is the mitigation cost based on — does it include the acres of surface waters?
The traffic forecasts in section 5 come from a computer model — the Tampa Bay Regional Planning Model. It was developed by the region's metropolitan planning organizations with the Florida Department of Transportation, its results are put through a validation process, and it is updated as plans change. It is not a Pasco County invention and it is not unusual; every metropolitan area in the country forecasts traffic this way.
It works in four steps, and knowing them helps you understand what the data can and can't tell you.
Two things follow from that structure.
The estimated number of households in 2050 is likely the primary input. The number of new houses drives the amount of traffic. The model can show you how traffic redistributes when a road is added, but it can't show whether the road itself brings more development than was assumed, which would in turn increase traffic.
The population forecast used by Pasco is on the high side. Florida planning normally uses the University of Florida's medium projection, which puts Pasco at about 815,800 people in 2050. The plan uses a county-produced figure of 1,018,698 — slightly above UF's high projection. The county explains it as a correction for a Census undercount plus its own growth modelling, and Pasco has genuinely grown fast for decades.
The model does one job — forecasting how many vehicles end up on each road — and it does that reasonably well. But several of the project's five stated goals are outside what it can measure. On top of the two limits above, here is what it never addresses:
The boards only measure congestion. Safety, evacuation, noise, pollution, truck volume... all of these are unaddressed.
Pasco's population is forecast to roughly double between 2019 and 2050 — from about 562,000 to over a million people. Under any of these projections, low or high, traffic in our area gets substantially worse over the next 25 years whether or not Rangeland Boulevard is built.
So the choice isn't between more or less traffic. It's about where the additional traffic goes, which streets carry it, and what gets built to move it. Arguing that this road will bring more cars is true but incomplete; the harder question is what the alternative arrangement would be, and that's what the no-build comparison at Workshop #3 should show.
The 2050 household and job totals are an input to the model, identical in every alternative, and the population figure behind them sits above the University of Florida's high projection. What would these forecasts look like using UF's medium projection instead, and how sensitive are the volumes on our streets to that choice?
Each section above ends with the questions I could not answer from the public documents. Several may well be answered on 24 September; the rest are worth putting on the record.
Workshop #3 is open-house format with a video on loop — arrive any time between 5 and 7, look at the boards, and talk to the project team directly. Materials go online the same day at mypas.co/TED, so if you cannot make it on the night you can still read everything that was shown and comment on it. The comment deadline is what matters most, and it runs to 8 October whether or not you were there.
To be included in the workshop record, comments must be received, or postmarked if mailed, by that date. Three ways:
Comments sent to the project team above go into the route study record, which is the file the county has to respond to when it documents this study. Email to general county addresses, posts on Facebook and signatures on third-party petitions do not enter that record. They may be worth doing for other reasons — they are not the same thing, and only one of them obliges anyone to answer.
If you want to reach the Commissioners as well, that is a separate and also useful act: the Board meets every other Tuesday at 10 a.m., alternating between the West Pasco Government Center in New Port Richey and the Historic Courthouse in Dade City, and takes public comment.
Be specific about your questions and concerns. A question that names a document or a number has to be answered on the record; a statement of opposition gets logged as a statement of opposition.
Rangeland Blvd Extension Route Study — Pasco County
Bud Bexley Pkwy Route Study — Pasco County
Widen Suncoast Parkway (SR 589) PD&E — Florida's Turnpike
Rangeland Boulevard PD&E Study public meeting newsletter, Pasco County, September 2024
Public Workshop #3 mailer, Pasco County, September 2026
Alternatives evaluation matrix, Public Workshop #3 — Pasco County, September 2026
Project schedule board and Public Workshop #3 newsletter — Pasco County, September 2026
Traffic boards — existing · 2050 no-build · 2050 build — Pasco County, September 2026
Concept boards — Alternative A · Alternative D · Alternative E · typical sections — Pasco County
Workshop boards dated 30 April 2025, shown at Public Workshop #2 on 1 May 2025
Rangeland Blvd alternatives evaluation matrix, 18 January 2025
Pasco MPO 2050 Long Range Transportation Plan — projects 114.1–114.4, 118.1, 124.1, 126.1, 127.1, 131.1; Appendix B project sheets; Appendix F socioeconomic forecast
MPO Transportation Improvement Program FY 2027–2031 — priority list item 10, project 454569-1; state and federal fund code table
FDOT Florida Traffic Online — published traffic counts
Florida Statutes 334.03 — definitions of arterial, collector and local roads
Pasco County Land Development Code 901.3 — access management standards by road class
FHWA, Highway Functional Classification: Concepts, Criteria and Procedures, 2023 edition
A lot is being said about this project at the moment, some of it mine. Several claims that circulated this month turned out to attach a real-sounding remedy to a real-sounding procedure in a way that does not survive a look at the source. I am not going to relitigate them here and I am not naming anyone — people are worried and that is fair enough. But everything below is free, public and searchable, and you do not have to take my word or anybody else's.
In September 2026 the Pasco County Transportation Engineering Department wrote to me about this page, section by section, with corrections and clarifications. I have applied them. Below is each one: what this page said before, and what is correct. Where the county disagrees with a reading rather than a fact, I have said so and left the reading in place with their objection beside it.
Two of them, numbers 2 and 3, I then got wrong in the other direction — and the county's own workshop board showed me up four days later. Those entries record the round trip rather than quietly reading as though they had been right all along.
Source for every item below, unless it says otherwise: William Poon, P.E., Interim Transportation Engineering Director, Pasco County Transportation Engineering Department, by email, 14 September 2026.
Was9,100 vehicles a day.
Correct6,100 vehicles a day. Fixed in section 5.
WasC in 2023 to D in 2050 at the east ramps. On 18 September I changed the 2050 value to E, because the county wrote that "SR 54 at Suncoast ramps should show LOS C in 2023 to LOS E for Alt A in 2050."
CorrectBack to D, and the mistake was mine. The county publishes every grade as a morning and evening pair; this chart shows the evening only. Their workshop board of 24 September gives E (D) at both ramp terminals — E in the morning, D in the evening. Their letter was the morning value and I put it in an evening column. The evening grade was right before I touched it.
WasC in 2023 to D in 2050. On 18 September I changed it to D to E, because the county wrote that "the SR 54 at Ballantrae LOS should go from LOS D to LOS E."
CorrectBack to C in 2023 and D in 2050, which is where it started. I have now read all three of the county's workshop boards directly: the existing-traffic board gives C (C) and the build board gives D (D). Neither peak on either board is E.
UnresolvedSo the county's letter of 14 September and the county's boards dated 24 September disagree about this intersection at both ends, not just one. The page follows the boards, because they are the more recent documents and the ones that were on display at the workshop. I have asked which is right and will publish the answer here.
Was"The project entered the county's adopted long range plan in December 2024."
CorrectIt was in long range plans adopted by the Pasco County MPO before 2024, and has been in the Pasco County Comprehensive Plan since 2006. This is a much older project than I had it.
WasThe process diagram showed a PD&E study as a separate step after the route study, drawn dashed because it was not in the county's funding request — and the page argued that a step was missing.
Correct"These are two versions of the same process." A route study follows Pasco County's own code and standards; a PD&E study is the same process run under federal law, where federal money or federal involvement is in play. The diagram has been rebuilt and the missing-step argument is withdrawn.
Confirmed independently: the county's own public meeting newsletter of September 2024 is titled "Rangeland Boulevard PD&E Study" and covers the same 3.4 miles. Both names have been in use for this study since 2024.
WasA slide headed "There's no funding to study the noise impact," and text saying the detailed noise work happens later, after an alternative is chosen.
CorrectThe county has chosen to follow the FHWA procedures for measuring and predicting highway traffic noise, and that evaluation has already been done: under those procedures, mitigation was found reasonable and feasible for one short segment of the project near the Preserve community. The county keeps full discretion over what mitigation actually gets built. This page had it wrong and the claim is gone.
Was"No truck forecast has been published for any of the three segments."
CorrectAbout 4% of daily traffic is trucks on the existing segments of the Rangeland Boulevard corridor, and about 12% on the parallel stretch of SR 54. The county expects the corridor's truck share to rise once the segments are connected, but to stay below SR 54's — and above the local street network. A design-year truck percentage for the completed corridor still has not been published, and I have reworded the question to ask for that specifically.
WasAn open question: is Bud Bexley Parkway already in the modelled 2050 network behind these numbers?
AnsweredYes. The Tampa Bay Regional Planning Model "incorporates all roadway projects in the MPO's long range plan (including the Bud Bexley Parkway project currently being evaluated in a separate study)." The question is retired. The answer confirms that these figures describe the whole corridor, not one segment of it.
WasAn open question.
AnsweredThey do not. "Build Alternatives A, D, and E have the same traffic forecasts." The county's workshop board for 24 September is headed "PREDICTED TRAFFIC — ALTERNATIVE A, D & E" over a single set of numbers, so this is now published rather than just stated in a letter.
WasThis page treated the drawn cross-section as the whole corridor, and read the wider median as meaning a wider corridor.
CorrectThe drawings exclude the grassed area between the sidewalks and shared-use paths and the right-of-way line. That strip changes width between the narrow-median and wide-median sections, so the median can widen without the total right-of-way widening. Noted on the figure in section 2.
WasThis page read the Freight Priority Network listing as meaning the road is intended to carry trucks.
County's reading"The designation of a freight corridor does not mean that it will have heavy truck use," and many state and county roads carry the designation. The plan citation stands — the corridor is listed — but the county's reading of what that implies is now printed beside it, along with the truck percentages in note 7.
Added"No interchange or six-lane section is currently being considered for approval in the Rangeland Blvd Route Study," and the county says no probability of a future interchange or widening can be estimated. The wider median is a low-cost option that would make future widening cheaper, and whether that ever happens is for future county leaders to decide, whichever alternative is chosen. This sits beside Florida's Turnpike's statement that the interchange is suspended pending demonstrated stakeholder support, not instead of it. Both are in section 2.
WasTwo level-of-service values changed on 18 September on the strength of the county's letter, which gave single letters with no peak hour named.
CorrectBoth are reverted above. The lesson is worth recording rather than burying: the county's published boards give AM (PM) for every intersection, this page shows the evening peak only, and a bare letter in an email cannot safely be dropped into one column or the other. Where the two disagree from here on, the page follows the published board and says so.
Was“A WB-40 truck is a design vehicle classification representing a medium-to-large truck with a 40-foot wheelbase.” (Slide 02.)
CorrectThe design standards list the WB-40 as an “intermediate semitrailer” with a -foot wheelbase and an overall length of feet. Found on 29 September 2026 while linking every figure to a source; not from the county’s letter. Source: FDOT’s Florida Greenbook, Table 3-2, which reproduces the national AASHTO design-vehicle table.
County's objectionThe per-mile comparison to area-wide averages is misleading, because this is an entirely new roadway with new bridges spanning the Suncoast Parkway and the Anclote River, and one alternative adds a pedestrian underpass. The construction estimates are also being updated and will be presented at the workshop.
What I didThis is a disagreement with a reading rather than a factual error, so under the policy at the foot of this page I have published it beside the figure rather than removing the figure. I am still checking whether the other projects in the comparison set carry structures of their own. If they do not, the objection is a strong one and I will say so.