Read this column done by Criag Pittman that details local opposition to this proposed toll road: The Florida DOT’s latest ‘Billionaire Boulevard’ plan has rural FL outraged – Florida Phoenix. Read it here.
Excerpt:
Last month, because of Halloween, TV was full of horror movies, including one cleverly titled “Halloween.”
That one, released in 1978, featured a frightened young woman, played by scream queen Jamie Lee Curtis, fleeing a masked and murderous psycho named Michael Myers, whose dialogue consisted of him breathing very loudly.
At the film’s climax — do I really need yell SPOILER ALERT here for a 43-year-old movie? — Donald Pleasence saves her by shooting the homicidal maniac six times. The killer falls off a balcony, apparently to his death. But when Pleasence looks for his body, it’s gone. That’s how we wound up with approximately 437 sequels, remakes, and reboots with titles like “Halloween 29: Michael Myers vs. the Lord of the Dance.”
I was reminded of the never-say-die saga of Michael Myers the other day when I got a call from a very angry lady from Levy County who was upset about the M-CORES toll roads.
But wait, I said, the Legislature killed off those expensive and ridiculous roads to nowhere! They (figuratively) got shot and fell off the balcony!
Turns out they only killed two-thirds of it. One road, like Michael Myers, somehow survived the execution, crawled away to recuperate, and is now getting ready to kill again.
I am talking about the Northern Turnpike Extension, which is supposed to branch off from the Florida Turnpike in Wildwood and head north toward some as-yet-unnamed terminus. At least two of the potential routes show it cutting through Levy County.
The Levy County routes steamroll right through the longleaf pine flatwoods and swamps of the 58,000-acre Goethe State Forest, as well as smashing a hole in the Marjorie Harris Carr Cross-Florida Greenway, a currently unbroken 110-mile linear park that stretches from the Gulf of Mexico to the Atlantic Ocean.
“They’re trying to sneak this in through the back door!” said Robbie Blake, the 75-year-old Levy County activist who called me.