Efforts continue in widening the 0.785-mile stretch of Midway Road between Selvitz Road and Jenkins Road near the Florida Turnpike amid more delays and a budget hike.
Builders from Halley Engineering Contractors, Inc. of Miami reached “58.9” percent completion of the widening project as of Nov. 1, according to FDOT spokesperson Guillermo Canedo in a Nov. 25 email.
The project also experienced a small uptick in its budget from its initial $23.5 million to approximately $23.8 million, wrote Canedo. FDOT has not yet reported this fact in their weekly traffic reports, last published Nov. 21 before taking a one-week Thanksgiving-related recess.
In addition, the FDOT website has not reported how buildout along Midway Road has strayed from its initial Fall 2026 completion date.
“The project remains on schedule for completion in early 2027,” Canedo wrote, adding: “The timeline is subject to weather conditions, holidays and unforeseen circumstances.”
The widening endured 255 days, or over two-thirds of a year, worth of delays since construction began April 1, 2024, according to Canedo. Out of these days, 139 (54.5 percent) were attributed to inclement weather; 85 (33.3 percent) to “utility conflicts”; and 31 (12.2 percent) to holidays.
“The weather has been the leading cause of delays in 2025,” Canedo wrote. He added that rain impeded the progress of paving eastbound lanes as moisture would interfere with the drying of freshly laid asphalt.
The latest leg of widening Midway Road also incorporates the clearing of 22.9 acres, according to Canedo. He specified that builders needed to remove quotas of 15.8 acres of foliage and 7.1 acres of aging roadway by early next year.
Of these quotas, builders cleared “approximately 13” acres of trees and “less than 0.5 acres” of old asphalt so far, Canedo wrote. “Most of the existing pavement remains in place and will be removed (during) construction.”
Further work will incorporate widening another approximate 0.5-mile stretch of Midway Road from west of the Turnpike to Glades Cut-Off Road for a projected cost of $71.4 million, FDOT schematics show. The work is scheduled to begin in the summer of 2027.
This future project will also see the buildout of access to the Turnpike from Midway Road via new ramps near Corporate Drive and Winterlakes Park.