There was only a single streetlight at the intersection on Welch Road near where a pickup truck left the road and slammed into a tree in the early hours of Nov. 9.
Now, just two months after the Apopka community mourned the deaths of three teenagers on that dark stretch of Welch, Orange County is taking steps to make the road safer.
The community got its first look Monday and Wednesday nights at a city-wide comprehensive study that identified various improvement projects aiming to fix lighting and congestion on 27 well-traveled roads as part of the county’s Northwest Orange County Areawide Transportation Study. Welch is one of those roads, and would get new lights as well as new lanes under the plan.
But funding, transportation officials told residents, may be tricky and time may be running out. The city of more than 62,700 residents has ballooned since the 2020 Census, when it was at roughly 55,000, and is only expected to grow.
“By the time we get it all done and you say we need new roads, we can’t build new roads because it’s all developed,” said Christine Moore, Orange Commissioner whose district includes Apopka. “So it’s really important that we’re getting to this at this point so we can solve some of these problems.”
For years, Apopka residents say, they’ve struggled with so much traffic they fear for their safety and their children.
“I do not allow my kids to even walk to take the bus,” said Sammia Pratt, a longtime Apopka resident. “We recently were successful in getting the bus stops moved off State Road 441 but it’s still a very dangerous area.”
Between 2022 and 2024, over 3,400 crashes occurred across the city, including 20 fatalities. The majority of the four miles of Welch Road has an above average crash rate, the study found.
One major finding was that many segments of roads and intersections do not have enough lights.
The study found 85% of fatal crashes in the city occurred during low-light times of dawn, dusk or at night, contributing to off-road crashes, said Hatem Abou-Senna, Orange County’s project manager for the study.
“We looked at lighting, the number of utility poles and spacing along the roadway as well as at intersections,” Abou-Senna said. “We found a majority of the intersections have between zero and three lights, which is underlit.”
Family and friends of Julio Lopez, Enrique Rodriguez Sabas, and Leyner Velasquez —the three teens killed in a crash in Apopka Sunday— grieve during a candlelight vigil at the crash site on Welch Road, Monday night, Nov. 10, 2025. The students attended Apopka High School and Kelly Park School. (Joe Burbank/Orlando Sentinel)
In the early hours of Nov. 9, 17-year-old Julio Lopez, 17-year-old Enrique Rodriguez Sabas, and 13-year-old Leyner Velasquez were passengers in a truck returning from a quinceañera, a traditional Latin American celebration of a girl’s 15th birthday, along a dark stretch of Welch.
The driver of the truck failed to safely drive along a curve, police said, leading to a collision with a tree and the deaths of the three boys. Police say the investigation is still ongoing.
“The entire community of Apopka is mourning,” said Yesica Ramirez, the general coordinator with the Farmworker Association of Florida, amid vigils and remembrances for the boys at the site of the crash.
That section of Welch was already failing to handle traffic, according to the study. It found that 22% of the city’s roads earned a grade of D, which means lots of congestion with noticeable slowing down and frequent stops. Roughly 11% of the city’s intersections are failing and another large portion earned a D grade, according to the study.
County transportation officials said some projects on their bigger list are already funded and will be completed soon. These projects include extending Sadler Road, adding new intersections at State Road 429 and widening it to six lanes, and roughly five intersection improvements along Rock Springs Road.
But other planned road widenings, such as adding two more lanes to Welch Road, are not funded. These projects include widening 12 other roads across the city from two to four lanes or from two to six. On Monday, residents questioned how long the improvements would take and how widened roads will be able to handle projected growth.
Brian Sanders, Orange’s manager of the transportation and planning division, said the county’s “hands are tied” and they cannot stop new growth under Florida law.
“We’re always catching up … everyone’s coming to Orange County and Apopka so we’re having to deal with that too,” Sanders said. “By the time we’re able to get the funding we may not be able to cope with growth and traffic.”
The project is set to be presented to the board in May for its first public hearing.
