RUSKIN - The lines on a draft county plan that could define future road corridors show a network of dots and color coding even in the most remote southeast corner of Hillsborough County, igniting a debate that has been smoldering in recent years.

On one side are people worried about urban sprawl, who say, 'If you build it, they will come.'

On the other are those who say 'they' - possibly hundreds of thousands of new south county residents - will come anyway, and without new roads, there will be gridlock.

There's no money behind the South County Transportation Plan, expected to go before Hillsborough's Planning Commission and county commission for review early next year. If adopted, it would become part of the county's Comprehensive Growth Management Plan that shapes future development.

Public meetings on the updated plan, which has been revised since workshops held in July, are scheduled for Oct. 23 in Ruskin and Oct. 24 in Riverview.

Highway Cuts Through Rural Land

Chief among concerns for organizations such as Rural Lithia Area Neighborhood Defense and the Tampa Bay Sierra Club is the inclusion of a limited-access, six-lane highway that has been talked about for years and alternately referred to as a bypass or beltway.

The recommended transportation plan approved by county staff and working committees shows the freeway cutting a wide swath from just south of the Hillsborough-Manatee county line northeast through rural Wimauma and Lithia toward Plant City.

The draft map suggests access ramps at U.S. 301 and County Road 672, a rapidly developing country intersection, and along an east leg of Bloomingdale Avenue near Turkey Creek that has yet to be built.

Almost as galling for Mariella Smith, a Ruskin resident and Tampa Bay Sierra Club member, is the prospect of at least a dozen widened, extended or newly built roads through farmland and wilderness. Opponents fended off some of the road corridors shown on the draft map in other plans only days before the South County Transportation Plan popped up on Hillsborough's Web site, she said.

'I'm appalled to find some of the same stuff back again so soon after citizens worked so hard to get this junk scraped off the last plan,' Smith said.

She said she doesn't buy the position of Ned Baier, Hillsborough's transportation planning manager, who is shepherding the plan through the approval process. Baier points to projections that show a population of a half-million people in south Hillsborough County by 2050.

Add to that a new regional mall in the planning stages near Apollo Beach and hordes of shoppers and job commuters expected to be streaming north into Hillsborough from south of the county line.

'Like water, transportation has no boundaries,' Baier said.

Identifying road corridors in the comprehensive plan would help county officials place conditions on commercial and residential developers that require them to pay a bigger share of construction costs, he said. A bypass highway, though not a road to be planned or built by the county, also could divert up to 48,000 motorist trips from Interstate 75, siphon away truck traffic and potentially eliminate the need for two new traffic lanes, according to a consultant's study.

'It's all about how people are going to get around,' Baier said. 'Is there enough transportation capacity in your plan?'

Smith argues: 'That whole argument is backwards. What we need to be asking is how many people do we have room for? How many can we comfortably afford, and where do we want to put them? Don't tell me we're going to have to pave over all our agricultural land.'

Pam Prysner, president of RLAND, said there's no way to predict where growth will go 40 years from now.

'It's premature,' she said. 'I'm not at all comforted by the fact that it's decades away. It's decades away only until they find financing.'

Developers Influenced Plan

She and Smith say the plan bears the fingerprints of area developers. Baier conceded that the idea of updating a south county plan approved four years ago sprang from meetings with developers who participated in a county-state partnership to widen U.S. 301. Consultants started working on the plan in April.

Initially, it was to be considered for approval by the planning commission and county commissioners this fall. However, it was among proposed comprehensive plan amendments postponed by the planning commission, which cited a deluge of proposals supposedly broached in anticipation of Hometown Democracy, an initiative that could require voter approval of growth plan changes.

Baier said the county has broadened the perspective of its transportation plan advisory committee by including homeowner and civic association leaders. The committee member list shows only five of the 25 participants have no strings to the development industry. Seven are county staff or consultants, and 13 represent builders, developers or firms that provide services for the industry.

Representatives of Centex Homes, a home builder with projects in Riverview, Wimauma, Lithia and Apollo Beach, sit on the committee but did not return calls seeking comment.

IF YOU GO:

WHAT: Public meetings on proposed South County Transportation Plan

WHEN: 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. Oct. 23, South Shore Regional Service Center, 410 30th St. SE, Ruskin; 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. Oct. 24, Riverview High School's cafeteria, 11311 Boyette Road, Riverview.

INFORMATION: (813) 272-5849 or visit
www.hillsboroughcounty.org/pgm/

Reporter Susan M. Green can be reached at (813) 865-1566 or sgreen@tampatrib.com.