News / Military
By Howard Altman / Tampa Bay Times / June 1, 2016
TAMPA — To U.S. Rep. David Jolly and state Sen. Jack Latvala, the line of cars backing up every day on Dale Mabry outside MacDill Air Force Base is more than an inconvenience.
“The lineup you have in the morning presents a really great opportunity for a terrorist hit,” said Latvala, R-Clearwater. “Somebody with an automatic weapon can wipe out a whole bunch of service men and woman at one time, and that is a potential issue that worries folks.”
Jolly, a member of the House Appropriations Committee as well as the Military Construction, Veterans Affairs and Related Agencies Subcommittee, reached out to Latvala to find out the best way to ease congestion.
The first step, said Jolly, is for the state Department of Transportation to determine what can be done. Every day, more than 15,000 cars enter MacDill Air Force Base, with about 6,000 arriving during the morning rush hour, according to base officials.
Jolly said the DOT has agreed to do a traffic study.
The goal, said Jolly, is to find out ways to hasten the flow of traffic. On the military construction side, that could mean creating additional entries into the base or increasing the number of lanes into the Dale Mabry gate. The state could widen the road for additional lanes or turn lanes.
Jolly acknowledged it could be years before any federal funds would become available for such construction. And that would require someone else taking up the issue because he is leaving his seat to run for the U.S. Senate.
Jolly said he decided to pursue the issue after a briefing by Air Force Col. Daniel Tulley, MacDill’s base commander.
“One issue that continued to be a concern to MacDill is the long wait times in the morning to get into gate,” Jolly said.
MacDill officials did not comment.
Jolly and Latvala will meet with Tulley at 6:30 a.m. today to discuss the issue, according to Preston Rudie, Jolly’s spokesman. Then the two lawmakers, along with DOT officials, will hold a press conference at 6:45 a.m. outside the gate.
Traffic has been such a concern at MacDill that there was even a smartphone application developed to help deal with the problem.
The Tampa-Hillsborough Expressway Authority, which oversees the Selmon Expressway, developed “via511,” an app providing near real-time data on travel times for primary and alternative routes onto the base.
The app specifically was designed for MacDill users to give the wait time from Gandy Boulevard south to each of the four base access points, authority spokeswoman Susan Chrzan said in January.
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