Ask three people in Hobe Sound what's happening with the Bridge Road interchange and you'll likely hear three different projects described. One person will tell you the state is taking Hobe Sound Farms. Another will tell you they finally fixed that dangerous exit off I-95. A third will shrug and say it's all years away anyway. None of them are entirely wrong, and that's the problem. Two separate stories, involving two separate stretches of road, have been folded into one conversation, and untangling them matters if you drive Bridge Road more than once a week.
Two Different Problems Wearing One Name
The $447 million project moving through Florida's Department of Transportation right now is a highway-to-highway connector: a direct link between Florida's Turnpike and I-95 that doesn't currently exist anywhere in this stretch of Martin County. It is not, according to FDOT's own reporting, a fix for the existing Bridge Road exit ramp, the same ramp where two teenagers lost their lives in a crash on January 2, 2026. The existing I-95 and Bridge Road interchange would remain unchanged under the new plan. The new ramps go up roughly two miles north and south of that intersection, connecting the two highways to each other, not to the surface street underneath them.
That distinction gets lost easily, because both stories share a location, a road name, and a farm that happens to sit in the middle of both.
What FDOT Is Actually Proposing
The project under review is a Project Development and Environment study, the second of FDOT's formal phases before design and construction can begin. It covers roughly two miles of Florida's Turnpike and I-95 on either side of the Bridge Road crossing, and the build alternative calls for four elevated ramps rising 25 to 27 feet over existing traffic lanes, spread across 233 acres of new right-of-way. FDOT's own justification cites five years of mainline crash data along this corridor: almost 1,300 crashes on the Turnpike and nearly 2,650 on I-95 between 2018 and 2022, an economic toll the agency puts at $482 million. Worth sitting with: that data is about the limited-access highways themselves, not the Bridge Road ramp where January's crashes happened. It's the argument for connecting two interstates to each other, not an argument about the surface intersection underneath them.
Cost estimates for the project have moved depending on what's bundled into the total. Reporting from October 2025 put the interchange alone at roughly $150 million, rising to about $309 million once the Turnpike's widening to eight lanes is folded in, while later coverage that same month cited a combined figure north of $447 million for the full project. The Turnpike widening between Jupiter and Fort Pierce was already planned independently, and FDOT's project engineer, Bill Howell, has said the agency intends to build both pieces together rather than come back a second time. That sequencing is the more useful fact for a homeowner than any single price tag, since it means the interchange and the wider highway are now one project on one timeline, for better or worse.
Three ramp layouts made it into FDOT's September 2025 draft engineering report before one was recommended for advancement:
| Concept | What the study found | Status |
|---|---|---|
| 3A-1 | Would have affected the Hobe Sound Farmers Market and three of the four Bridge Road ramps, and reduced weaving distance on southbound I-95 | Not recommended |
| 3A-2 | Added local access but needed far more right-of-way and created more decision points for drivers | Not recommended |
| 3B-3 | Lowest projected cost, no change to existing Bridge Road interchange operations, fewer utility conflicts | Recommended for advancement |
That recommendation matters because the state also considered, and rejected, a $231 million version that would have put all four ramps on one property, crisscrossing it entirely.
The Farm Caught in the Middle
That one property is Hobe Sound Farms, the 126-acre working farm off SE Bridge Road that most residents know for its Saturday and Sunday farmers market, its farm stand, and its fall pumpkin patch. Owner Zach Gazza bought the land in 2019 for $1.4 million and built it into what it is now, alongside a separate land deal in which he sold and swapped acreage with Martin County and the South Florida Water Management District for $18.8 million. Under the recommended alternative, two of the four new ramps would rise on the northern end of his property, while the other two would go up south of Bridge Road on cattle grazing land owned by retired attorney Robert Shapiro. Splitting the ramps between two landowners, rather than stacking all four on Gazza's farm, is the state's version of a compromise.
The gap between how the state and the farm describe that compromise is worth noting. County reporting has described the footprint as roughly 1.6 acres along the farm's eastern edge, with state officials saying it wouldn't touch farmers market operations. Gazza has described a larger loss, telling reporters the affected area includes "everything north of the lake, which includes our cow-calf operation, includes our apiary." He's also skeptical of the project's stated purpose. "The evacuation argument is a joke," he told Stet News, arguing the ramps were designed to route Bridge Road traffic onto the Turnpike rather than to speed hurricane evacuations. Right-of-way acquisition, by his understanding, wouldn't start until 2032 at the earliest, which leaves years of uncertainty over expansion plans for a farm that has become a genuine weekend fixture for families in the area.
The Ramp the Project Leaves Alone
None of this touches the intersection that actually made local news twice in the first week of January 2026. On January 2, a Camry exiting I-95 southbound at Bridge Road failed to observe the stop sign at the ramp and was struck by a westbound SUV, a crash that killed the 17-year-old driver and his 16-year-old passenger and seriously injured a second teenage passenger. Four days later, another serious crash at the same ramp sent an adult and a child to the hospital. Zoe Farren, who works at Hobe Sound Farms just up the road, described ambulances and emergency vehicles at that intersection as a regular occurrence rather than a rare event. Residents Faith Swan and Jessica Ventura both told reporters they consider Bridge Road dangerous, with Ventura specifically calling for a traffic light where the ramp currently relies on a stop sign.
That request sits outside the interchange study entirely. Martin County officials have said any change to that specific intersection, whether a signal or a widened approach, would need to come through county commissioners working with FDOT on a separate track. The $447 million project two miles up and down the road doesn't include it, isn't scheduled to include it, and by FDOT's own description, leaves that exact ramp unchanged. If a light or redesign comes to that intersection, it will be the result of a different conversation than the one dominating headlines about the Turnpike connector.
Where This Actually Stands
FDOT's own project materials targeted completion of the PD&E study for the first quarter of 2026, with the standard caveat that the schedule is subject to change. Whether that milestone has actually been hit isn't something FDOT has made public in a way that's reached local coverage. What comes after it does matter for anyone planning around this corridor:
- Design and right-of-way work can't begin until the PD&E study formally closes, and Gazza's own estimate puts land acquisition conversations no earlier than 2032.
- FDOT has said the combined interchange and widening project could take up to a decade to build once it starts.
- Any fix to the existing Bridge Road exit ramp, including a traffic signal, would require separate action from Martin County commissioners, independent of the interchange timeline.
- No taxpayer funding is being used for the interchange itself; state officials have said it will be financed through Turnpike tolls.
For now, Hobe Sound Farms is still open on its usual schedule, the Saturday market still draws a crowd, and Bridge Road still funnels traffic through a stop-controlled ramp that residents have asked, more than once, to have looked at on its own terms.
Staying current on what's actually moving in this corridor, separate from what's just circulating, is part of knowing this place well. If you're weighing a move to Hobe Sound or Jupiter Island, or simply want a clear-eyed read on how something like this could shape a specific street or parcel, Susan Turner and The Jupiter Island Team are always glad to talk it through. Let's Connect.
