LAND O’ LAKES — Pasco County plans to extend Asbel Road to meet the Ridge Road Extension, giving residents of two nearby neighborhoods a direct route onto the new road without using U.S. 41.
The $1.9 million project would run from Falcon Crest Boulevard to Ridge Road. Final plans are under review by the Southwest Florida Water Management District and the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, the county told The Land O’ Lakes Beacon. Once permits are in hand, construction should take about 250 days.
Asbel Road now dead-ends behind the Tierra Del Sol community. When the connector is finished, residents there and in Asbel Creek & Estates will be able to reach the Ridge Road Extension directly rather than taking Land O’ Lakes Boulevard (U.S. 41) to a planned traffic signal where the extension will meet Connerton Boulevard.
The connector comes as the larger project faces another delay. The county now expects the initial two-lane connection of the 3.75-mile extension, which runs from North Sunlake Boulevard to U.S. 41, to open in fall 2027, with the full project finished in spring 2028.
The holdup is a railroad bridge. Crews are “experiencing some schedule impacts as we work through the required clearance process for the bridge construction over the CSX Railroad,” the county’s Transportation Engineering Department told the Beacon in June. The CSX line runs north-south, parallel to U.S. 41.
The county cautioned that even the new dates are “subject to change depending on coordination needs with CSX Railroad during construction.”
The $85 million second phase, which began in 2024, will add a 5-foot sidewalk, a 12-foot multiuse path, 5-foot bike lanes, a 24-inch water main and a 20-inch reclaimed water main. It also will create a new intersection with Connerton Boulevard, which completed its own 1.1-mile extension to Ehren Cutoff in March 2025.
The $104 million first phase carried Ridge Road from Moon Lake Road past the Suncoast Parkway in 2021 and added a parkway interchange. That exit serves the Angeline School of Innovation, Moffitt Cancer Center’s Speros campus, an apartment complex and a back entrance to Angeline, a sprawling community expected to eventually house about 35,000 residents.