secting traffic flows. A general picture of highway conditions in Southwest 

 Florida is given in Table 9. The roadway widths generally represent the mini- 

 mum widths, which are most often encountered outside of the city limits in 

 rural areas. These narrow roadways determine the capacity for inter-county 

 travel . 



To indicate the relative use of the highways in each county, a traffic 

 volume range was produced. The low volumes generally correspond to the aver- 

 age daily traffic reported by the Florida Department of Transportation on the 

 narrow rural sections of roadway described above. The high volumes are en- 

 countered in towns or at major intersections. In these cases, the widths are 

 generally greater than those shown in the table. 



Capacity (volume of traffic) computations were based upon procedures doc- 

 umented in the Highway Capacity Manual (Florida Department of Transportation 

 1965). For capacity level C, 10% of the traffic is trucks, the terrain is 

 level, peak hour traffic equals 12% of the average daily traffic, and the 

 directional split is 60/40. 



US-41 is the most congested roadway in Southwest Florida (Table 9). With 

 the opening of 1-75 from Bradenton and Naples in 1982, much of the traffic 

 will be diverted from US-41. In Pasco County, for example, US-41 traffic is 

 considerably lower because 1-75 absorbs much of the 1-75 north-south traffic. 

 The next most congested highways in the region are US- 19, 1-75, and SR-60, all 

 in the Pinellas County area. 



Historical changes in traffic volumes at designated locations in the 

 State are documented by a permanent traffic recording stations maintained by 

 the Florida Department of Transportation. The average daily traffic volumes 

 reported at the temporary recording stations in Southwest Florida are in 

 Table 10. 



TRAFFIC VOLUME FORECASTS 



The Florida Department of Transportation has studied traffic volume 

 changes in each of the 10 counties since 1929. These observed changes were 

 correlated with county population and motor vehicle registrations. From these 

 data, projections were made for traffic in each county (Table 10). The pro- 

 jections were made by multiplying a base year traffic volume by a 20-year 

 growth factor. For example, to estimate the 1997 traffic in Charlotte County, 

 the 1977 traffic volumes were multiplied by 3.652 (the 20-year growth factor). 



The usefulness of these estimates is restricted, however, to roads lo- 

 cated outside of areas having an ongoing Urbanized Area Transportation Study 

 (UATS). In Southwest Florida, there are UATS for Tampa, St. Petersburg, Sar- 

 asota, Bradenton, and Fort Myers. Newly emerging UATS areas are in Pasco 

 County (Port Richey) and Collier County (Naples). Documentation of UATS data 

 collection, modeling, and network assignment procedures and forecasted traffic 

 volumes are maintained by the Florida Department of Transportation, Division 

 of Planning. 



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