County set to widen LPGA Blvd.

Workers have started clearing land to widen the bottleneck in LPGA Boulevard near Derbyshire Road in Holly Hill.

Every day, Hamid Zomorodian experiences the traffic bottleneck near the intersection of LPGA Boulevard and Derbyshire Road in Holly Hill.

Vehicles race to and from Interstate 95 on a four-lane, divided highway only to have to slow down and merge into two lanes before hitting another stretch of four-lane travel.

In the next year or so, that will change. Volusia County which widened the stretch between Derbyshire and Nova Road several years ago used eminent domain to acquire several key parcels to finish widening the remaining two-lane stretch.

Motorists have noticed clearing activities on some of the lots, while electronic message boards signal construction work is expected to start this week.

County Engineer Gerald Brinton said Florida Power & Light is planning to move power poles and the county anticipates advertising for bids for the widening job within 90 days. The county has more than $3 million budgeted for the project, which will widen the road for less than a half-mile between Jimmy Ann Drive and Derbyshire.

I think its a very good idea, said Zomorodian, who owns a car sales and service business on LPGA farther east, at the corner of Ridgewood Avenue, and lives in Port Orange. In the short run, some businesses might be disrupted, but in the long run, it might be beneficial for everyone.

According to Volusia County traffic engineering data, an average of 17,300 vehicles traveled each day along LPGA Boulevard between Jimmy Ann Drive and Derbyshire Road in 2012. In comparison, the average daily traffic count that same year for the stretch of International Speedway Boulevard between Nova Road and Martin Luther King Boulevard was 24,500.

Renee Carpenter, an employee at one of those businesses, Southern Comfort Protective Systems, said she hopes the job wont drag out like the one farther east did. That took forever, she said.

The contractor, Built-Rite Construction of Pierson, had issues with removing soil, which extended the project to 18 months in length and led to a legal tussle with the county and Daytona Beach over its payment. In the end, the county and city ended up adding $400,000 to the $2.26 million job.

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County set to widen LPGA Blvd.