Brooke Armstrong, a medical worker at UF Health Shands Hospital, was running late to her job in the pediatric unit.
A regular commute became an hourlong trip through downtown Gainesville’s back roads in mid-June when construction at one of the city’s busiest intersections, Archer Road and Southwest 13th Street, created a standstill with a roadblock alternating between a turning lane and regular lane.
That standstill likely won’t be the last.
“It was insane,” Armstrong said. “When I saw that, I was like, ‘OK, I'm just going to get breakfast at the hospital. Thank god we have breakfast here.’”
More hospital breakfasts might be in the future for Armstrong with the Florida Department of Transportation’s new project.
Emily Harrington, an FDOT public information officer, said the recent construction was utility work in preparation for the Intersections Improvement Project.
The $2.9 million project is to begin in December and conclude in Spring 2027, she said. It will expand lanes, upgrade traffic signals and create a raised crosswalk for pedestrians crossing Archer Road.
“We can all agree that this is one of the busiest intersections,” Harrington said.
The number of vehicles passing through the intersection each day increased from 18,000 in 2024 to 19,300 in 2025, she said, according to an FDOT Average Daily Traffic Count.
The improvements directly support FDOT’s statewide goal of enhancing safety and creating a more connected transportation network, she said. The department aims to ease daily drives and protect pedestrians crossing the street.
Looking forward, most roadwork will occur at night, she said, so commuters won’t need to worry about lane closures during busy hours as much as they did with recent repairs. FDOT is also in the process of hiring a pedestrian escort during the day.
“We don’t want to cause a lot of backups for users of the corridor,” Harrington said.
But while congestion is expected to improve during future construction, the first phase caused road blockoffs and detours redirection for cars trying to use the corridor during the day.
Step one in the plan to reduce congestion and increase road safety was for Gainesville Regional Utilities to adjust underground pipes, said William Dampier, the operations and maintenance manager for water distribution at GRU.
Road maintenance was required to move and replace 300 feet of water and sewer lines, he said, to prevent the 50-year-old pipes from bursting underneath new roads.
“Because water’s pressurized, it usually blows out a big cavity,” Dampier said. “It’s just the nature of the beast.”
Small cracks in sewer pipes also suck dirt into the line, he added. Dirt holds up the road above it, he said, and if left unchecked, cracked pipes could cause the road to cave in.
“We call it a sinkhole,” he said.
If a big truck or steady traffic goes over the street at the wrong time, cars could drop underground with the collapsed road.
Utilities work finished in June is designed to prevent that possibility, he said. Everything is ready for FDOT’s project to start — ahead of schedule, he added.
Armstrong, one of many commuters who use the intersection regularly, looked at a map of the busy road.
“If they do widen this area, I think that’d be a great idea,” she said.
Savannah Higgins is a contributing writer for The Alligator.
