Collier County Just Approved $7.6 Million to Design a Flyover at Livingston and Immokalee Road. Here's What's Coming — and When.

If you've sat in traffic at Livingston Road and Immokalee Road during season, and who hasn't, the vote that happened July 28 at the Collier County Board of County Commissioners meeting is the one you've been waiting for.

Commissioners voted unanimously to award a $7,594,351.10 design contract to Fort Myers-based DRMP Inc. for the design of a Livingston Road flyover above Immokalee Road, one of the most congested intersections in North Naples. DRMP was the top-ranked firm among three bidders. Its initial bid of $8.436 million was negotiated down through the county's procurement process.

The design contract kicks off the first phase of a $111 million total project that is expected to take five to six years from start to finish.

The concept is straightforward: carry Livingston Road over Immokalee Road on a four-lane flyover, eliminating the traffic signal conflict at one of North Naples' most chronically congested intersections.

Traffic modeling from the county's Immokalee Road Corridor Congestion Study, completed in August 2021, showed that building the flyover would reduce wait times at the intersection by approximately six minutes. That may sound modest in isolation. At the scale of thousands of daily commuters stacking up at this intersection during season, six minutes per vehicle adds up to an enormous daily reduction in aggregate delay.

The existing traffic signal at the intersection won't disappear entirely; it will be replaced with a signalization system similar to the one at Golden Gate Parkway and Airport Road. That system allows the county to reallocate green time dynamically, giving significantly more signal time to east-west traffic on Immokalee Road while reducing the green time given to north-south movement, since northbound and southbound vehicles will be using the flyover instead of waiting for the signal.

Transportation Management Services Director Trinity Scott compared it directly to the Golden Gate Parkway overpass at Airport Road, a project that eliminated miles of backup on both roads and now allows both corridors to flow freely.

The 30-month design phase begins now. Construction will not begin until after the diverging diamond interchange at I-75 and Immokalee Road is completed, a project that is expected to begin construction in early 2027.

That sequencing is intentional. The DDI at I-75 changes how traffic enters and exits the Immokalee Road corridor, and the flyover design needs to account for those changed flow patterns before construction begins. Trying to build both simultaneously would create dangerous and unworkable construction conflicts at two adjacent major projects.

All-in, Transportation Management Services projects completion is somewhere around five and a half to six years from now, putting the finished flyover in the 2031-2032 timeframe.

The Livingston and Immokalee flyover is one piece of a broader traffic improvement system taking shape across North Naples simultaneously. Commissioner Bill McDaniel noted the project connects to the I-75 expansion, improvements along Immokalee Road, and the extension of Veterans Memorial Boulevard, a coordinated infrastructure push across the most congested corridor in Collier County.

Additional intersection improvements are planned east of the flyover, at Juliet Boulevard, the Walmart entrance, Northbrooke Drive, and along Logan Boulevard. No additional improvements are currently planned west of the flyover, which Commissioner Burt Saunders noted could shift congestion westward toward other intersections once the flyover opens. The county said it is working with FDOT to address those downstream impacts.

For the tens of thousands of North Naples residents, commuters, and seasonal drivers who use Livingston Road and Immokalee Road daily, the design clock has started. The finish line is years away, but the project is finally moving.

Information sourced from Gulf Shore Business reporting by Aisling Swift and the Collier County Board of County Commissioners meeting record of July 28, 2026.