West Orange County is rapidly growing, and residents at the Horizon West community are worried that it might be growing too fast.

  • West Orange County residents concerned about rapid growth
  • Officials say a master plan has been in place for years
  • Several projects have already been completed in the area

Jeffrey Snyder, who is concerned about the addition of a hospital close to his home, writes in this week:

The new hospital off SR-429 near Porter Road does not have an exit. Are they planning on routing traffic off the Schofield Road exit or New Independence Parkway? Both are already busy. What does the future look like here?

Snyder recently moved to west Orange County to move away from congestion.

"We came from Clermont to get into Orlando more proper, but we wanted to stay away from the traffic of Orlando," he said. "So, we looked out here in the west and we saw 429 was a nice place to be."

Now he says conditions are starting to worsen and look like another area he is familiar with in Orange County.

"We are very concerned that this is going to be east Orlando," Snyder said. "East Orlando near 50 and Semoran is just very hard to navigate through. And it seems like all the traffic (improvements) they are doing there now is just to catch up with traffic from before."

For now, the signs of progress can be seen in this stretch of Orange County as new shopping centers and residential communities are going up seemingly everywhere. However, it is a new hospital going up soon that may be the tip of a giant traffic iceberg.

"We have New Independence Parkway at 429 and we have Schofield Road at 429 — the two exits," Snyder said. "But between that, we are going to have a hospital. And it looks like it is going to be a full-service hospital. There is no exit for that hospital. I'm not sure which one they are going to use to exit there."

Snyder hopes Orange County will be proactive because the amount of accidents is already rising.

"We haven't seen many major accidents, but we've already seen several minor accidents — especially at the intersections to the off-ramps," he said.

Orange County officials confirmed that while there will be no exit for the new hospital between New Independence Parkway and Schofield Road, they did ensure that a master plan has been in place for the area for about the last 20 years.

Several projects have already been completed with more on the way. They are able to build these roads so quickly because of a unique partnership they have with most of the developers in the area. As part of the agreement to build homes, these developers are required to either provide the proper right of way for road development or, in some cases, complete that roads themselves.

So although development appears to be rapidly increasing in west Orange County, officials said they are ready and have been for some time.

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