US 27 serves as the main arterial through Highlands County connecting the Heartland region Florida including the six counties of DeSoto, Glades, Hardee, Hendry, Highlands and Okeechobee and the urbanized area of Highlands County including the cities of Sebring and Avon Park to South Florida. The purpose of the traffic analysis is to evaluate US 27 and identify other existing parallel and connecting facilities to US 27 that could potentially be improved to meet the purpose and need. The addition of employment data resulted in the reduction of the V/C ratio from the initial model. Hence a validation procedure involving adjacent counties is further needed to evaluate the regional traffic accessing US 27. Thus, the model within the subarea is used for No-Build alternative in this study with further investigation needed before the model could be used for forecasting future traffic for the alternative corridors.
The subarea adjustments were made in the 2015 Base Year D1RPM model and was carried over to 2045 Cost Feasible D1RPM model to project AADT and thereby evaluate the roadway performance. The AADTs ranged from 17,500 to 63,000 in the No-Build along US 27 within Highlands County. Highest AADTs were observed around Sebring area, south of US 98, Avon Park and Highlands/Polk County line. The peak hour LOS analysis within the area shows that most of the sections along US 27 around Sebring area, near to Highlands/Polk County Line and south of SR 66 shows LOS E, is not within acceptable LOS standards.
Based on the results of the No Build alternative analysis, improvement alternatives will be developed and evaluated in coordination with engineering and environmental sections. The evaluations will identify potential impacts associated with various alternatives, including impacts to other regional facilities in the project study area. A general-purpose lane widening/capacity Build alternative was evaluated.
The Build alternative AADT ranges from 17,500 to 71,500. The highest AADTs were observed from Highlands/Polk County Line to south of SR 66. The improvements considered from the general-purpose lane widening/capacity alternative did address the capacity issues along most of the areas. However, with an increase in capacity within the improvement limits induced additional demand from nearby roadways onto the adjacent sections of US 27. This additional demand triggered sections of US 27 to operate at LOS that are not within the acceptable range further exasperating the capacity issues within the study area compared to the No-Build and fails to meet the purpose and need for the Highlands County.
The crash data for the five-year period from January 1, 2019 to December 31, 2023 was