Seminole County leaders push for voice in McCulloch Road widening plan

Seminole County officials are pressing for a seat at the table as Orange County moves ahead with a $33 million plan to widen McCulloch Road, a border corridor that could shape traffic, growth and the rural boundary near the UCF area.

The project covers 1.03 miles from N. Orion Boulevard to N. Tanner Road and would rebuild McCulloch as a four-lane divided roadway. Orange County says the study, first kicked off in 2021, was meant to improve safety and traffic flow while also evaluating drainage, freight accommodations, sidewalks, raised medians, lighting, landscaping and intersection changes. The corridor carries about 28,000 vehicles a day.

Orange County’s preferred design would push the widening northward onto Seminole County land. County planners have said widening to the south would require buying more than 12 homes, a choice that has sharpened the political tension around the project and raised questions about who bears the cost of growth at the county line.

Seminole Public Works Director Tawny Olore said the need for improvements is hard to ignore because Seminole residents are already sitting in traffic generated by Orange County visitors or residents. But Seminole Commissioner Bob Dallari said the county was not brought into the discussion in enough detail. He said he had heard only a little about the project through MetroPlan Orlando and attended an Orange County community meeting, but that Seminole’s commission was caught off guard. Commissioner Jay Zembower went further, calling the widening a short-gap fix for a much larger east-west traffic problem.

The dispute intensified after the project was approved in MetroPlan Orlando’s Transportation Improvement Program on Feb. 11, 2026. MetroPlan updates that five-year schedule annually, and the approval came days before Seminole commissioners raised concerns about being left out. At a Feb. 23 Orange County meeting, about 70 residents turned out and roughly 80 percent opposed widening the road, underscoring how quickly a technical road design has become a neighborhood fight over access, traffic and land use.

The McCulloch Road corridor also sits inside a wider transportation network tied to the University of Central Florida. Orange County’s separate UCF Area Pedestrian Safety Study includes McCulloch from Alafaya Trail to North Orion Boulevard, with plans for pedestrian-scale lighting, wider sidewalks, median channelization and enhanced crossings. That broader planning context makes McCulloch more than a local widening proposal. It is now a test of whether Orange and Seminole can align on a corridor where campus traffic, suburban growth and the remaining rural edge are colliding.