DADE CITY – Transportation leaders in Pasco County will explore strategies that will ensure road infrastructure holds up to strong storms and other vulnerabilities.
Ned Baier, southeastern planning director for engineering firm Volkert, points to Pasco County enduring two tropical storms within a month last year.
“Pasco County is one of those counties where you do have a coastal area as well as a lot of conservation lands with rivers and lakes,” Baier told the Pasco County Metropolitan Planning Organization on Nov. 13. “There was in places some extreme amount of flooding, especially on your roadway system.”
The Pasco County MPO is collaborating with Volkert to develop a Resilience Improvement Plan to address natural and man-made roadway vulnerabilities, according to Angel Avila, an MPO planner.
The project team includes transportation planners, a structural engineer and a hydraulic engineer. They began working on the project in September and should finish in June.
“We have some people that are kind of experts in roadway construction,” Baier said. “That’s going to come in handy when we start identifying improvements in projects.”
Baier said the team’s work will involve a lot of technical data and GIS mapping.
“We’re going to be actually analyzing nearly 2,000 miles of roadway in the county by segment,” Baier said. “There will be a lot of technical analysis. We’ll actually be scoring the performance of roadways in terms of vulnerabilities.”
He mentioned flooding, sinkholes, storm surge, wildfires and cybersecurity attacks as some of the vulnerabilities they’ll be exploring.
The scope of work includes an implementation plan that will have recommendations with five-, 10- and 20-year horizons.
Baier shared that one of the suggestions brought up has been to integrate homeowners associations in their work. He mentioned they’ll work with the county’s communications team on promoting public workshops and other opportunities for feedback on social media.
Pasco County Commissioner Jack Mariano requested the project team explore a trailer park and canal near U.S. 19 in the Hudson area as well as an outfall system near a car dealership in New Port Richey.
County Commissioner Kathryn Starkey suggested the team look at Little Road, which goes underwater during big storms.
