This Labor Day weekend, tourists and locals heading to Walt Disney World or the coast have a new way to pass traffic accidents faster — driving on the shoulder.
The outermost lane on parts of two Central Florida highways, usually reserved for stopped cars or emergency vehicles, will now be opened for drivers when there is an accident elsewhere on the road.
The Flex Lanes are the Central Florida Expressway Authority’s latest effort at easing congestion in one of Orlando’s fastest growing corridors. The agency installed them along 21 miles of State Road 417 last month and 13 miles of State Road 429 in Orange County late last year, but they’ve been used only sporadically since then.
Labor Day marks the first major holiday where the lanes will be fully functional.
They’re opening just as this holiday weekend is set to break travel records with a predicted 17.4 million travelers nationwide, according to the Transportation Security Administration.
Orlando is ranked second for domestic travel this weekend by AAA. Hertz, one of the largest car rental companies globally, says its top destination based on advance bookings is The City Beautiful.
Along 417 and 429, CFX is expecting many more than the typical 78,000 drivers who use the corridor on normal days. The new shoulder system should help keep them moving.
Sign gantries across the expressway lanes will show a green arrow when the wider median shoulder is open for driving. Improvement projects finished last month ensured the traffic-ready shoulders along these stretches of expressways are wider than normal. The highways are monitored by the Florida Department of Transportation’s Regional Traffic Management Center, which will decide when and where to activate the special lanes.
For now the lanes are only open in the event of traffic accidents, but in the coming years the road agency hopes to use them during peak rush hour across the entire system, spokesperson Brian Hutchings said in an email. To start, just certain sections of the two toll roads will have Flex Lanes, in places chosen due to the overwhelming congestion, he said.
“Initial implementation of our Flex Lanes program on sections of SR 417 and SR 429 was based on traffic analysis showing that traffic volume doubled in five years on those sections of our system when typically you wouldn’t see that level of increase for 15-20 years,” Hutchings said. “It really speaks to how quickly this region is growing.”
The toll road agency typically removes about 100 tons of debris from its roads every month, so CFX may have to work overtime to ensure its shoulders are kept clear, said Don Budnovich, director of maintenance at an Aug. 14 board meeting.
“We are taking action to have Flex Lanes as debris free as possible … and include preforming daily litter patrol six days a week,” Budnovich said. “We’re performing weekly sweeping of the Flex Lane and the inside shoulder in the event Flex Lanes are deployed.”
Road Rangers who provide roadside assistance across CFX’s infrastructure will drive the shoulders before the Flex Lanes are activated to ensure they are clear, Budnovich said.
So far the Flex Lanes have been activated four times, with the most recent instance occurring on Thursday morning on SR 417 southbound approaching Boggy Creek Road after an accident.
“The activation went well, and motorists used the Flex Lanes as intended,” Hutchings said. “We even received feedback from a customer who said, ‘It worked really well. I think it definitely cut down on the wait time’.”
CFX has partnered with the University of Central Florida to study how much time the Flex Lanes will save drivers. Hutchings said preliminary data indicates there is better traffic performance during incidents, with only localized speed drops near the accident and faster recovery back to normal speeds compared to similar segments without Flex Lanes.
