Orange Belt Trail project development
What the county recorded
This item is not from the published agenda
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The source document
The county’s agenda for Board of County Commissioners, Sep 9, 2026
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What was said
Machine transcription of 12m of recording, with speaker names inferred from voice matching. 43% of 37 lines carry a name. It shows what was said, not what was decided, and both the words and the names can be wrong.
Thank you. Yes, sir. Thank you. Now we'll go to R 41, Project Development Environmental Presentation and Resolution on the Orange Bell Trail.
Commissioner Weightman waited for you for this one.
Alright. Good morning, Commissioner Will Poon with the Transportation Engineering Department. I'm here today also with our consultant, Wyatt Bowers with Atkins Realis, here for the Orange Belt Trail Project Development and Environmental Study.
And here's a brief agenda. For today, we're going to go over the background of the project, the key PDE study components, the public engagement process, the trail development, and then the PDE study results, and afterwards we'll go through the next steps. So without further ado, Wyatt? Yeah.
Good morning, thank you. Wyatt Bowers with Atkins Realis. Um I'm gonna try to go through this quickly. Um we do have some additional slides at the end if there are questions and we need to get to some more data. I know you had a lot in the packet, all the reports and everything. The vision originally um It was to follow the Orange Belt Railway Corridor, which extends all the way from the Orlando area all the way down to St. Pete. Those who are familiar with the Pinellas Trail, that is along that old railway. It was originally
listed in the Penny for Pasco back in 2015 as the Bay County Trail. So when we started the process of doing a PD ⁇ E study and the recommendation of doing the PDE is that it opens up the project for potential state and federal funding, um, but it is also required to follow the National Environmental Policy Act or NEPA. Determines the location and conceptual design, which is what we've been working on for several years. We've also done some
evaluation of the environmental effects. And then when we are done, hopefully, we will get a LDCA, which is a location and design concept acceptance, and then the project can move into the design phase. So there are a number of components, but just to break it down in pretty simple terms, uh there was a lot of community outreach, which you'll see in just a second. Uh, alternatives development, we went through a very long list of potential alternatives over
the past few years, narrowed that down, did some detailed analysis, and then we are here today, hopefully, looking for your uh recommendation of. of what would become the locally preferred alternative.
So through January of this year, seven community meetings, almost 500 people in total attendance. We do have a project website that has received hundreds of comments. Also, we did some online voting in both April and August of 2023. We also have had a series of agency meetings, and we have about 300 people in. the database that get uh our regular notices and there have been of course numerous articles and stories
uh in the media, TV, newspapers, radio, so on. So again, the starting point was the original Orange Belt Railway Alignment, but we learned very early on that west of Bellamy Brothers Boulevard, most of it is within the Tampa Bay Water Pipeline area. And east of Bellamy Brothers, most of it is currently private land. So as a result, we began to start to expand. The area
and look at other alternatives. Now what we ended up doing was breaking up the corridor into three large three separate areas. You can see in yellow, that's the first start, uh first part that is actually set for construction in fiscal year 27. So that was pulled out of our PDE. The second part in green relates to um corridor studies that are underway um Bringing it from east of Gunn Highway up through Bexley Village and up to US 41.
So that part was also pulled out and our PDE officially covered US 41 to Trilby to connect with the Withlacoochee State Trail.
As part of the process over the last year and a half or so, we've refined it further. Um and in the spring of 2025, there was a determination that we could in fact get to Trilby using the Withlacoochee Trail extension and coming down to Dade City. And so thereby our focus became Area 3, and really we were looking at how to get from US 41. Two Dade City. So last summer we came up with a series of additional
alternatives at the direction of based on public comment and some of the questions that came from staff as well as I believe some commissioners. We were able to look at a series of additional alternatives and we looked at all of those that are listed there. Those are the ones that are on the maps outside the boards. Um and we did an evaluation looking at various environmental factors as well as some potential engineering effects and what potential
costs there might be. And then we went back out with to the community last summer and got their input on these alternatives. So we have a very simplified scoring summary right here. Like I said, there are some other slides if we need to that go into more detail. But in the end, we are recommending from this. You can see the scores. Alternative one, which is going up from US 41 over basically to Aaron Cutoff,
and then Alternative 2A, which goes Through the Tampa Bay Water catchment area and the preserve. Alternative 3A, which we'll get into in just a second, which comes around north of State Road 52 underneath the overpass underneath the underpass, I guess, of I-75. And then Alternative 4A and 5A, which now use what is now County Road 52. as the way to get to Dade City.
We did take a look at some of the cost considerations in comparing the alternatives. This is a quick summary of those just to let you know the kinds of things we were looking at. I know one of the strong directions was to minimize wherever possible, get to basically almost no right-of-way needs. And so that was something that we were looking at. You can see, for example, in segment 3B and in segment 5B, that there would be a need for some potential right-of-way. That's part of the reason that those
uh did not score as well. Um we do have some other you know constraints regarding construction or drainage in some places that we do have to take into consideration. And then we're also trying to capitalize as much as possible on areas where the trail already exists or is planned to be constructed. So, as I mentioned earlier, the recommended alignment that we're bringing to you today is segment one. which goes from US forty one to Mount Carmel Cemetery.
From there, we are recommending segment 2A again through Aaron Cutoff, Pump Station Roads with Mud Road, and then Bellamy Brothers up to State Road 52. And then segment 3A would traverse 52 over to Old Pasco Road, going, as I said, underneath I-75, kind of snaking around the back of the distribution center, and getting back to Down to 52, and then segment 4A, as I noted, would use five uh County Road 52 past
the college and meeting up to Happy Hill Road. And then at Happy Hill Road is where segment 5A begins, and we would come up County Road 52 and along Meridian Avenue. The total length there is 23 miles. That does not mean 23 miles of new trail, but that is the length of
Yeah. So conclusions, again, the recommended alignment minimizes the impacts, lowering the level of NEPA documentation that's required. It provides the maximum flexibility for future funding scenarios by breaking it up into segments. We can get into that if there's further questions. It allows the capability to prioritize by segment for construction, minimizing the financial impact. tax by spreading those costs. And again, the purpose and need of the project of
Trinity to Trilby is met through use of the Hardy Trail and the Withlacoochee. So we are asking today for you to adopt or support the low what would become, as I said, the locally preferred alternatives, segments 1, 2A, 3A, 4A, and 5A. From there, we would complete the draft reports, get them back to county review. We would hope that we would be able to send them over to FDOT to disseminate with review agencies by the end of October.
Perhaps early November, and then NEPA approval hopefully early next year.
And with that, our contact information for Aaron, who's the county project manager, myself and Diane Jones, who's our engagement coordinator. We have additional staff here as part of our team and happy to answer any questions.
Um pleasure of the board it's twelve o'clock now. Do you want to finish this up in the afternoon? Yeah. Okay. Uh do you want to take it out as soon as we get back? Or wait till the public hearing? Um
Is there public comment on these?
Uh there's not but we could allow it. I think it's some of the people who public comment might have thought they were going to be speaking. How many folks public comment
are here? I think Commissioner's referring to public comment on this item or in the afternoon. I would expect public comment in the afternoon based on our current docket.
No, on this item. I mean it's an hour and a half break, so if if folks depending on how many folks are here to speak on this, I would be willing to hear them now. up the context that way they've not wasted their morning.
Well everyone that signed up this morning spoke. So correct that was my planning on speaking on the right-of-way.
One.
One.
I let him speak to
the question.
It's not a public item to speak, but we expect a public comment. I didn't see anyone on the list, so I let it go. Good morning,
Commissioner, and thank you for the opportunity to speak. Terry Strader, 31414, Pasco Road. I do have some of the properties that we we are close by the trail. And I've been following this thing since the beginning and I do appreciate some of the staff's input and how they've been able to maneuver, you know, and try to create this map. It gets a little busy with all the 1A's, 2A's, and so forth and so on, so it's kind of hard to track. However, you know, nobody's ever talked about the overall cost of
this thing. You know, to me, I look at this thing, I look at Bellamy Brothers from Bellamy Brothers. The new the new State Road 52, there's already a trail there. You could take this, pick up that existing trail the state bought and paid for, take it all the way to Fort King Road, take Fort King Road up at the Hardy Trail or Donna Meridian, and this this trail is complete with with very minimal cost to the taxpayers of Pasco County. Thank you very much.