SANFORD, Fla. – Nobody likes a noisy neighbor, but residents living along a section of the Wekiva Parkway in Seminole County say the traffic is so loud it rattles their homes.
People who live in the Tall Trees subdivision, which is just south of S.R. 46 in the 32771 ZIP code, have been pushing for solutions since the expressway opened in January.
Bill Wills, who’s lived in the neighborhood since 1996, showed News 6 just how closely the expressway was built to some of the homes.
“I went over there to talk to the construction workers while this was all being built,” he said. “He was surprised that it was this close.”
The expressway is just beyond Darrell Ealey’s backyard property line. He’s lived in his home for 25 years and says the noise is worse than he expected.
“Trucks in the morning are extremely loud and trucks in the evening are extremely loud,” he said. “Sometimes when the trucks are using their engine breaks, as I call them, it actually shakes the house.”
Wills and Ealey have been pushing for solutions for months, including asking the Florida Department of Transportation for a sound wall or another type of noise-cancelling device to mitigate the sound of traffic.
However, they were told by FDOT that their neighborhood isn’t dense enough to warrant one.
“They said the number of homes per acre is too low to pay for sound barriers that would go along the expressway and basically reduce the noise level significantly,” Wills said. “Although, there’s a sound wall in front of the RV park. If you go over by the apartment complex and the condos, they have a sound barrier as well. They just wouldn’t build one here.”
News 6 sent a list of questions to FDOT about the noise and whether they can provide any solutions to the folks who live in Tall Trees but have yet to hear back.
“We’ve had FDOT here several times throughout the transition, taking trees out that used to be back there,” Ealey said. “Not much they’re going to do, if anything.”