Winter Garden to install light at Hennis Road intersection

WINTER GARDEN Following numerous complaints about the safety — or lack thereof — of the intersection at Hennis Road and Plant Street, the city of Winter Garden will be installing a new traffic light at the intersection.

“We’ve had a lot of residents ask for it,” City Manager Mike Bollhoefer said. “They consider it a dangerous intersection with a lot of traffic and such, so we decided to put it in.”

The city will be sending out bid proposals for engineering in June and anticipate to start construction in August. Bollhoefer gave a rough cost estimate of $200,000 for the project and a construction time frame of 30 to 45 days.

Residents who frequently navigate the intersection said the traffic light will help commuters navigate onto Plant Street safely. Currently, some residents consider the intersection so dangerous that they avoid it altogether.

“I have learned to avoid the intersection when trying to make any sort of left turn,” said Winter Garden resident Lauren O’Shea. “I think that the lights already present at Ninth Street and West Crown Point (Road) probably contribute to increases in speed and difficulty around Hennis, and it never feels like the lights are timed to allow for Hennis traffic to exit. I take the winding industrial roads to one of the intersections with a light to make my turns.”

Dorca Aristy, also a Winter Garden resident, uses the intersection daily but always navigates it with extreme caution. She said a traffic light is needed because the busy traffic renders a four-way stop sign useless.

“I drive through this intersection every day and have the feeling that I’m going to get hit by another car,” she said. “It’s very busy, and cars from different directions are trying to cross it at the same time. … I’ve seen a few accidents already, and I had to brake hard a few times because people trying to cross north to south or south to north don’t calculate how fast the cars are coming on Plant and they just jump in.”

Although O’Shea said she supports the installation of the traffic light, she fears it alone won’t be enough to solve the problem and might even make it worse. Turning left onto East Plant Street is nearly impossible, O’Shea said. Furthermore, turning right onto Hennis Road while traveling westbound on Plant Street also causes issues, because of the sharp angle that requires drivers to slow down considerably, annoying those behind them. 

“Simply adding a light will potentially make the intersection safer … but might cause other issues or exacerbate problems that I think already exist there,” she said. “The one-mile stretch between (State Road) 429 and Ninth Street contains four stop lights. This can be crippling during rush hour when trying to get from 429 to Hennis or past it and, honestly, people rushing through the Hennis area between the two lights may be one reason why the intersection is even more dangerous. 

“The lights are poorly timed, and backups can result in sitting in the one-mile stretch for 10 to 15 minutes,” O’Shea said. “Adding a fifth light would, I imagine, make this even worse. I think the city needs to invest in engineering resources to review the entire stretch, including reviewing speed patterns and considering all traffic flow options, especially as they are considering eastward growth of the Plant Street area.”

Contact Gabby Baquero at [email protected].