We do not need another toll road/infrastructure that will damage the already devastated wildlife habit that is left here in Florida.
I am a third generation Floridian from Broward county who moved to Polk county to find the natural habit, wetlands and peaceful wooded scrub oaks that was destroyed down there by I-75 and 595. Enough damage has been done already to Polk county!
For all the people who want to exploit our lower tax rates, polute our waters, devastate our wildlife please don’t move here! And builders/contractors build up not out! Please!

You’re probably about 80% right about the property sales and possible financial benefit to certain individuals, Anon. As I said earlier, Florida is being sold out a few acres (or hundreds) at a time.
Actually, I worked at the Villages for two years before moving to Tallahassee – I drew maps and charts as a graphic artist for the Villages newspaper – an unexpectedly high-quality paper, not at all the “Our Town” flyer you’d expect. Many times I drew maps of the expanding Villages golf courses and new developments. The Villages is a huge population area now, and still growing steadily. Imagining that kind of development expanding up and down the upper Gulf Coast of the FL peninsula all the way to I-10 is indeed a sad picture. Goodbye, rustic Old-Florida hamlets like Cedar Key and Steinhatchee.
I always used to breath a sigh of relief on the Hwy 19 trip north once you passed Crystal River. Stay on 19 heading south much farther after Crystal River, and prepare for stop & go traffic and red lights all the way to St. Petersburg. I hate to think of that sprawl building all the way up to I-10.

Mike- A few names to answer your question:
Thomas Peterffy (richest man in Florida)
Foley Property (largest contiguous piece of land east of Mississippi River)
think: The Villages along the Nature Coast
The Road will be built. Its not malicious, however it does break my poor little Florida heart.

EA, you’re correct about Hwy 19. I drove it regularly from Tallahassee to Clearwater (my home town) back in 1975 whan I was a student at FSU. When we moved to Tally 12 years ago from Orlando, we still drove it regularly because my father still lived in Clearwater – Hwy 19 in many places hasn’t much at all since 1975, it’s still very rural, sparsely populated, and you can drive for a half hour or more and not see another car on the road.
So – Hwy 19 is ALREADY 4 lanes of divided highway with a large median. It connects ALREADY to the Suncoast Parkway on the south and the FL-GA Parkway on the north. Why in HECK do you need to build another highway roughly parallel to an existing 4-lane highway that presently carries very little traffic north of Crystal River? Sure, you’ll have to build bypasses around little towns like Perry, Cross City, and Chiefland. You can’t run an interstate-sized traffic load right through the middle of those little towns. But the bypasses would certainly cost far less than building an all-new 4 to 6 lane highway that essentially covers the same route. You can add toll booths to Hwy 19 as necessary to help pay for the construction. But you’re correct: WHY build another north-south route parallel to Hwy 19?

I hate to admit it, Snidely, but you’re probably correct. As once I heard it stated: “Politicians refer to the body they’re trying to get elected to as “a cesspool of corruption” – Once elected, they see that same cesspool as “a Jacuzzi.” The voters become a non-consideration.
Florida (what’s left of it) is being sold out a few acres at a time. At least I’m happy that I got to experience Florida in the late 60s and early 1970s growing up. Whatever FL becomes with million$ of northerners moving in, I’ll have the memories of Florida back before it was inundated with people. FL is being “loved to death” like the Keys was a decade ago.