[responsive-slider id=11005]

With help from the Florida Department of Transportation and the River to Sea Transportation Planning Organization, Deltona is preparing to widen one of its arterial roads.

City officials are counting on the Transportation Planning Organization to provide the lion’s share of the funding for adding paved shoulders along a key segment of Elkcam Boulevard.

Planners want to place additional strips of asphalt on both sides of Elkcam between Sylvia Drive and Fort Smith Boulevard, which is approximately 1.25 miles long.

The cost of the project is about $1.322 million.

The shoulders, when completed, will have the effect of widening the segment of Elkcam to three lanes, allowing for the striping of a center turn lane.

Of the estimated cost, $1 million will come from the FDOT, and the city’s share will be about $322,000. The project falls under the FDOT’s Local Agency Program.

“A lot of this money is actually coming from the federal government,” Acting City Manager and Public Works Director John Peters said.

Indeed, the Local Agency Program agreement identifies the Federal Highway Administration as the source of some of the money allocated for the project.

Peters said the paving of the shoulders may begin in December and continue through much of 2021.

“It should be done within the year,” he noted.

Adding paved shoulders onto an existing road is a way to widen the road without having to go through extensive engineering, design and environmental permitting required for building a new road or constructing new lanes outright.

In the recent past, Volusia County added paved shoulders to parts of Doyle Road on the south side of Deltona.