Casselberry intersection closes June 2 for roundabout construction
Winter Park Drive and Wilshire Drive will close June 2 to 23, rerouting school and commuter traffic through neighborhood streets. Casselberry says the roundabout targets a safety choke point.
Drivers in central Casselberry will lose the Winter Park Drive and Wilshire Drive crossing for three weeks, and the impact will spill quickly into school drop-off lines, morning commutes and cut-through traffic on nearby streets such as Brighton Way and Cannon Way. The city says the full closure begins June 2 and runs through June 23 as crews replace the traffic signal with a roundabout, bringing delays, dust, noise and heavy equipment to one of the city’s busiest connectors.
Casselberry posted the closure notice May 14 as Phase 2 of the Central Casselberry Connectivity project. Work is scheduled primarily Monday through Friday from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m., although weather could shift the timetable. The city said the shutdown will stay continuous during construction, a sign that the roundabout work will not be staged as an open-lane project.
The detour pattern sends southbound drivers headed toward Red Bug Lake Road through Hibiscus Road, Zinnia Drive, Elm Drive, Wilshire Drive and Mark David Boulevard. Northbound traffic on Winter Park Drive, also identified as State Road 436 and Red Bug Road, will be routed through Hibiscus Road and back to Winter Park Drive. That follows the earlier Phase 1 closure on Hibiscus Road east of Winter Park Drive, which ran from May 11 through May 29 and forced temporary lane shifts on Winter Park Drive to keep two-way traffic moving.
City planning documents show the roundabout was not a last-minute idea. Earlier corridor planning for the Winter Park Drive Complete Street Study identified a roundabout at Wilshire Drive as one of the spot improvements along the corridor. The study says the broader goal is to make North and South Winter Park Drive safer, more comfortable and more connected for people walking and biking, with a preferred alternative that includes a shared-use path on the east side of Winter Park Drive from Red Bug Lake Road to SR 434.
That is the real test for the project after June 23: whether the new design actually reduces the congestion and turning conflicts that made the intersection a candidate for redesign in the first place. Seminole County Vision Zero materials point to roundabouts, refuge islands, narrower lanes and shared-use paths as safety treatments meant to slow traffic and improve pedestrian and bicycle movement, and the county once listed a Wilshire Drive at Winter Park Drive project at $180,000 before marking it canceled or merged into another project. Casselberry’s transportation plan says the city wants to become the most walkable, rollable and bikeable city in Central Florida, but the payoff will depend on whether the new roundabout delivers smoother traffic and a safer crossing when the barriers come down.
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