Crews are already digging into a nearly 1.75-mile stretch of Marigold Avenue in Poinciana, building three single-lane roundabouts meant to slow drivers down and stop the kind of collisions that have plagued the corridor for years. The $9.5 million project targets four intersections that a state safety study flagged as some of the most dangerous in Osceola County. Construction started in January and has already forced long-term road closures for commuters in the fast-growing community.
The redesign, first detailed by WKMG ClickOrlando, covers the intersections of San Lorenzo Road, Laurel Avenue, Peabody Road and San Miguel Road along Marigold Avenue. A 2020 Florida Department of Transportation safety study of those four intersections found 107 crashes during the study period, including 70 injury crashes that left 149 people hurt, according to the station's reporting. At San Miguel Road, the plan also calls for a new northbound left-turn lane designed to help drivers turn without blocking traffic behind them.
A Decade of Crashes Drove the Redesign
The crash numbers behind the project go back further than the 2020 study alone. Osceola County presentation materials on the study show that more than half of the 107 crashes recorded across the four intersections between January 2012 and March 2019 were left-turn or angle collisions, according to Osceola County documents. The county's breakdown found 31 crashes at San Lorenzo Road, 27 at Laurel Avenue, 25 at Peabody Road and 24 at San Miguel Road over that span.
Those figures explain the engineering choice. Single-lane roundabouts are built specifically to eliminate the high-impact angle and left-turn collisions that dominated the crash data, forcing vehicles to slow down while traveling through the intersection rather than crossing at speed, per the station's report. Federal Highway Administration safety research cited in county project materials found that converting standard intersections to single-lane roundabouts reduces fatal and severe injury crashes by 78% to 82% and cuts overall collisions by roughly 37% to 44%, a benchmark documented in filings tied to the project's Federal-Aid Local Agency Program funding under FDOT project ID 447605-1-58-01.
Federal Money and a Growing Community
The project's funding structure reflects Poinciana's rapid growth. U.S. Representative Darren Soto submitted a federal Community Project Funding request for the Marigold Avenue roundabouts, citing safety hazards in the community and describing it as historically disadvantaged, according to his congressional office. Poinciana, an unincorporated community spanning Osceola and Polk counties, grew to roughly 75,000 residents in 2024 and 2025, per U.S. Census Bureau estimates, a surge that has piled commuter traffic onto two-lane arterials like Marigold Avenue.
That growth is also why the project includes more than just the roundabouts. County plans call for utility work, drainage and stormwater upgrades, new lighting, and high-visibility crosswalks alongside the intersection redesign, the station's report notes. County commissioners are also expected to consider a change to their agreement with FDOT concerning how some of that utility work is being paid for, though the change would not add money to the project overall, per the same account.
Detours Stretch Into Fall
The construction has already reshaped daily commutes around Poinciana. San Lorenzo Road at Marigold Avenue has been closed for a multi-month detour since construction began in early January, with the closure expected to last through spring for roundabout building, according to Osceola County traffic advisories; Marigold Avenue itself has remained open to through traffic during the work. Regional transit provider LYNX has rerouted Bus Link 426 through October because of the extended closures at Marigold Avenue and Laurel Avenue, diverting bus traffic onto San Miguel Road and Monterey Road, per GoLYNX service alerts.
Part of a Wider Regional Push
Marigold Avenue's makeover fits into a broader pattern of roundabout-focused safety projects across the region. Osceola County commissioners voted in February to advance a separate Complete Streets project on Buenaventura Boulevard between Simpson Road and Osceola Parkway that also features traffic-calming roundabouts, as Hoodline previously reported. Just south in Polk County, transportation planners have set aside $39.8 million to widen a connecting 2.2-mile stretch of Marigold Avenue and Cypress Parkway from two lanes to four, a corridor where a fatal crash was reported earlier this month.
For now, the open questions in Osceola County center on logistics rather than design. It remains unclear whether the pending utility funding adjustment before county commissioners will affect the project's completion timeline, and county officials have not detailed how long residents should expect the current detour patterns to persist beyond the announced spring and October windows.
