For years some residents of Northwest Florida have referred to the stretch of highway running through the southern portion of the region's counties as Bloody 98.
State Rep. Joel Rudman said he has used the term often enough at roundtable discussions convened to contemplate traffic solutions along the terminally congested and routinely deadly stretch of roadway that some among the Air Force brass in attendance adopted it as their own.
That in itself, Rudman said, helped impress upon military leaders in Washington DC that U.S. Highway 98 had grown from a local problem to a national defense priority.
"When we were able to make it clear that there were military members being lost, it went from being a convenience issue to a mission issue," Rudman said. "The situation at our roundtable meetings flipped. Now it's 'If we don't do something our mission will be impacted.'"
Rudman, a Navarre resident himself, held a press conference Monday to announce that serious progress had been made in getting commanders at Eglin Air Force Base and Hurlburt Field on board with Santa Rosa and Okaloosa county officials to work towards a goal of relieving traffic on U.S. 98 in areas where it impacts access to the bases.
"This is the furthest these talks have ever progressed," he said. "We're in strong agreement now on a couple of options that were not on the table five years ago. We're working with the military on a potential course of action and how to plan and fund it. Courses of action are being decided as we speak."
Rudman said that a lot of the specifics regarding military participation in the planning remain classified, but he did say what is being envisioned is a collector road or roads that will pull vehicles off of the main thoroughfare. He likened the concept to one seen in Destin in which a series of roads allow locals to maneuver east and west across the barrier island while avoiding U.S. 98 congestion.
"This is basically analogous to the road plan in Destin," Rudman said. "I can get from one side of Destin to the other quicker than I can get from one side of Navarre to the other."
Serious consideration was given in 2007-08 to accessing Eglin property to relieve U.S. 98 congestion following the formation of what was known as the Northwest Florida Transportation Corridor Authority. The group established a grand plan to run a road called the Eglin ByPass from State Road 87 in Santa Rosa County all the way to U.S. Highway 331 in Walton County.
The plan had received tentative military approval when it was sideswiped by a salamander.
In 2009 the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service designated the reticulated flatwoods salamander an endangered species. Some 1,880 acres of Eglin property and 713 acres of Hurlburt Field land were found to be habitat suitable for the salamander.
Development of the roadway would destroy 44% of the known reticulated flatwood salamander ponds and would "destroy or severely degrade 22 breeding sites that support the largest reticulated flatwoods salamander population," according to a report filed in the Federal Register.
Rudman said environmental concerns, including those presented by the flatwoods reticulated salamander, would be taken into consideration as plans to ease access to the local military bases are put in place.
He also said proposals developed by the Northwest Florida Transportation Corridor Authority have not been considered by the officials attending the roundtable discussions that have achieved the latest breakthroughs.
A design study of one 3-mile segment of road that Rudman pointed to has been funded with $1 million in Okaloosa County surtax revenue and through a $375,000 transportation project grant secured by the state representative. The study will look at putting a collector road running parallel to U.S. 98 in an area in the southwestern end of Okaloosa.
The roadway would run from just west of Hurlburt Field across military property in an area behind Florosa Elementary School and the Florosa Fire Department headquarters, Okaloosa Public Works Director Jason Autrey said. The road itself will run back into U.S. 98 before it gets to the Santa Rosa County line, but utilities will be run all the way to the county line, Autrey said.
Autrey said regional leaders are excited to see whether the roadway experiment is a success that merits further future consideration.
Santa Rosa County residents in February got a look at what a connector road running parallel to U.S. 98 might look like in the Navarre area when Volkert Engineering presented the results of a Planning Development and Environmental study that looked at the feasibility of a Navarre Community Access Road.
Though it wasn't addressed specifically at the press conference, District 5 County Commissioner Colten Wright, who was in attendance, said that the Navarre Community Access Road could fit into future plans for easing traffic congestion.
The route being studied would take drivers using the connector road across busy State Road 87 north of its intersection with U.S. 98 and past the Navarre Beach Causeway Bridge, where traffic tie ups are a daily event during spring and summer months as visitors vie with locals to access Navarre Beach.
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