FORT MYERS, Fla. — The city of Fort Myers is one step closer to building a pedestrian bridge across Colonial Boulevard.
Your Fort Myers community correspondent Miyoshi Price looks at what the bridge could look like.
These images are not final. They are rough drafts of the John Yarbrough Linear Park Off-Road Bridge. They include lit signage highlighting the city of Fort Myers and its city logo.
The bridge aims to create safe trails for people to cross the road.
It will also be built to protect drivers.
"This whole steel girder system has protection so that you can't be up here; you just can't throw something off it," says Nicole Setzer, the city engineer. "It's encased in a mesh."
The city of Fort Myers council approved an airspace agreement with the Florida Department of Transportation to move forward.
"It's very heavily regulated," says Setzer. "They have design requirements."
FDOT will provide around 9.6 million for the build.
Creative touches and inspection work will cost the city around 2.2 million of its own money.
Price went to Colonial Blvd. and spoke with a bicyclist that was wanted more walkable/bikeable trails and bike lanes.
"Cars don't have much respect for my bicycle," says Keith Leu.
Leu says he bikes more than he drives.
"You're riding along, and all of a sudden, there's no more bike lane," says Leu. "So that, yeah, I think that's a little bit dangerous."
The city has until the end of the year to pick a construction company, and it hopes to break ground in 2025.
"Every bit that we can bite off this; this extends this trail another two miles to the north," Setzer said.
The portion on Colonial will run all the way to Hanson Street.
"There's still more to come," Setzer said.
She tells FOX 4 this is part of a bigger plan to create walkable and bikeable trails throughout Southwest Florida.
"This piece of construction will be part of theSun trail program, which is a larger off-road trail that will be happening from further south and south Fort Myers, all the way up through Cape Coral and beyond," Setzer said.
