Express to the Future

"Crash on I-75."

"Traffic backups north of Alico Road."

"Rubberneckers causing slow-moving traffic at Immokalee Road."

Like the rest of us, William Barton, chairman of the Southwest Florida Expressway Authority (SFEA), doesn’t want to hear it anymore. He’s leading a team that hopes to stem such scenarios by creating tolled express lanes on I-75.

Created by the Florida Legislature in 2005, the SFEA hopes to toll lanes five and six, which are currently being added on to the four existing lanes from Alico to Immokalee roads. The fee would be from 7 cents to 28 cents per mile, depending on the time of day traveled, and the money raised from those tolls would pay to widen the highway—at least, some part of it—to 10 lanes by the year 2015.

Barton, 68, was appointed to the eight-member SFEA board by Collier County commissioners, and elected chairman at the first meeting in March of 2006.

The Florida native jokes that he has a vested interest in the project because his grandchildren live in Brandon and "it’ll make the drive faster."

He’s also a good fit for the job. "Being involved in highway design throughout my life, the project made a lot of sense to me and I felt I could be useful," he says.

Sitting in an office filled with late-afternoon sun, we look out over one of the highway projects Barton managed during his career at engineering firm WilsonMiller: the widening of U.S. 41 from four to six lanes just south of Pine Ridge Road in Naples.

As the son of a contractor, Barton always knew he wanted to be a civil engineer. "I loved that it was innovative. It gave me the opportunity to think through and create things, and then watch them get built," he says.

He attended Auburn University in Alabama, and after graduation he and his wife, Pat, moved back to Sarasota, where they had grown up and met. "We came down to Naples for a golfing weekend and just fell in love with it," he says.