ORANGE COUNTY, Fla. – Construction is underway on a nearly $67 million project to widen Econlockhatchee Trail in east Orange County.
Pam Lorentz has watched the area evolve since she moved to her neighborhood in 1983.
“It’s definitely boomed more in the last ten years probably,” she said. “It stayed small for a long period of time, which I enjoyed. We had cows all around us. We were at the dead end. The street didn’t go through here.”
That population boom is the reason Orange County is in the process of widening Econ Trail. The project will eventually ease congestion on the busy road, but construction is making things difficult for drivers today.
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“You try to find another ingress or egress,” Lorentz said.
Crews are widening a one mile stretch from just south of Lake Underhill Road to just north of State Road 408 near Valencia College East Campus.
Cathy Evangelo, a senior engineer with Orange County public works, says new bikes lanes, sidewalks and a closed drainage system are also part of the project.
“We didn’t have funding for the south section, so originally, the north section from Valencia College Lane to State Road 50 was constructed,” she said. “That’s been four lanes for a while, so now we’re catching up and finished the south end of the project.”
Part of the challenge with the road project is that crews are dealing with two major thoroughfares. They have to widen the road under State Road 417, and they have to build a new bridge over State Road 408 that’s parallel to the existing one.
A portion of Lake Underhill Road is also included in the widening where crews are replacing an open canal with a 2,500-foot-long concrete box culvert.
“That will make it safer in the area,” Evangelo said. “It will also provide a more hydraulically efficient conveyance system and provide room for the widening on Lake Underhill Road.”
Over the last several months, lanes of Lake Underhill Road have shifted at the intersection with Econ Trail, which is set to continue until at least November.
Lorentz says she’s thankful she’s retired and doesn’t have a morning commute.
“For the people who are working, you can see the long red lines on Lake Underhill Road,” she said. “That’s just part of the explosion of people coming in.”
The Econ Trail widening project is expected to be completed in the first quarter of 2026.
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