The Night Shift Owns the Roads This Week: Gulf Beach Highway Paving, Scenic Highway Striping and U.S. 98 After Dark
Daytime Pensacola drives clean; after 8 p.m. the map changes. Three night jobs - one of them at a posted 35 mph - run through Thursday and Saturday across both counties.
The PM drive's real traffic story this week starts when the sun goes down. On S.R. 292, Gulf Beach Highway, drivers will meet intermittent lane closures from east of Bauer Road to Manchester Street between 8 p.m. and 6 a.m. all week for paving operations, according to the Florida Department of Transportation - and this stretch carries its own cautions: median devices are in place near Patton Drive and Mills Avenue, and the speed limit through the work is reduced to 35 mph.
On the east side of the bay, U.S. 90 - Scenic Highway - is being restriped at night. Intermittent lane closures run from south of I-10 to south of Hyde Park Road, Sunday through Thursday between 8 p.m. and 5:30 a.m., for striping operations, with law enforcement on site and flaggers directing drivers through the work zone. Fresh striping is the forgiving kind of road work - short holds rather than long closures - but it is also the kind drivers meet without warning at full speed, which is what the flaggers are for.
Santa Rosa County's night job is the longest of the three. The U.S. 98 widening between Bayshore Road and Portside Drive brings median and turn-lane closures from Bayshore Road to Tiger Lake Drive, plus intermittent lane closures with additional median closures on the same stretch from 7 p.m. to 5:30 a.m. nightly through Saturday, November 7, for paving. All of it, FDOT notes, is weather dependent - and with Wednesday's front in the forecast, Wednesday night's shifts are the ones to check before you set out.
