CHANGES, CHALLENGES, AND OUTCOMES
The I–4 Ultimate Improvement Project BY LINDSEY RANAYHOSSAINI Staff Writer
All Photos Courtesy of HDR.
When Florida’s Interstate 4 was built through Orlando in the 1960s, it was designed to handle 70,000 cars per day. The interstate, covering 8.2 miles, converted a 40-minute trip to just 10 minutes. But when Walt Disney World opened its doors in 1971, Orlando became Florida’s fastestgrowing city. Sea World followed in 1973, and by the time Universal Studios Florida opened in 1990, Orlando had already become known as the “Theme Park Capital of the World.” With the explosion in tourism, I-4 was not capable of handling the volume of traffic moving through the city. “Through the years, traffic kept growing,” said Steven Waterston, I-4 design manager for HDR. “Orlando kept growing. Disney came and then I-4 just got over capacity. The number of lanes and the way the interstate operated with the ramps couldn’t handle that increase in traffic.” According to U.S. Census data, the Orlando metropolitan area’s population grew from 700,055 in 1980 to 2,673,376 in 2020. And though I-4 had been modified and expanded through a variety of transportation projects over the years, a much more significant solution was needed to adequately manage traffic flow. In April 2014, the State of Florida awarded its largest-ever transportation project, the I-4 Ultimate Improvement Project, to provide a long-term solution to I-4’s traffic woes. The $2.87 billion project involved the reconstruction of 21 miles of interstate through the heart of Orlando, and engineering firms HDR and Jacobs were selected for the design joint venture.
36 | ENGINEERING FLORIDA
