Officials with the Florida Dept. of Transportation and the Orlando-Orange County Expressway Authority on May 25 announced an agreement to move forward with construction of the Wekiva Parkway, a 27-mile-long toll road estimated to cost $1.8 billion. The parkway would provide the last component of a beltway around the Orlando metro. The long-planned project has languished due to a lack of available funds. OOCEA and Florida’s Turnpike Enterprise, a division of FDOT, are still determining their respective commitments to the project but announced September 2011 as a goal for starting design work. Construction could start by late 2012 and is expected to take “at least seven years” to complete.