Howard Frankland Bridge in Tampa, Florida

The Howard Frankland Bridge is the Interstate 275 crossing of Old Tampa Bay that links Tampa with St. Petersburg.

The original bridge opened in 1960 and a second, parallel span opened in 1990, according to Hillsborough County. Beginning in spring 2020 the Florida Department of Transportation built a new southbound bridge that replaced the 1960 structure and added tolled express lanes in the median and a shared-use path on the north side.

The Tampa end of the project reaches State Road 60. FDOT District Seven project page lists the limits of the rebuild as 4th Street in Pinellas County to SR 60 in Hillsborough County, a length of 5.8 miles, in the cities of St. Petersburg and Tampa. The same page gives a construction cost of $973.4 million and an estimated completion of late 2026. FDOT files the work as project 422904-2-52-01, titled I-275 (Howard Frankland Bridge) new southbound bridge between Pinellas and Hillsborough counties, with a work type of New Bridge and a phase still listed as Construction. Because the express lanes, the trail and the conversion of the older span were all delivered under that one project, the FDOT page is the main official record for the Tampa crossing.

Howard Frankland was a Tampa businessman and banker, not a public engineer, and the bridge carries his name.

Hillsborough County describes Frankland, who lived from 1901 to 1980, as a prominent Hillsborough County entrepreneur, banker and philanthropist. As proprietor of Pioneer Tire Company in Tampa he studied the properties of rubber, inventing ways to recap tires, make floor mats and produce rubber balls. He served as president of the First National Bank of Tampa and of the Greater Tampa Chamber of Commerce, and he worked to attract MacDill Air Force Base and to build a third bridge across Tampa Bay.

That third bridge was his long campaign. The county states that Frankland advocated a cross-bay span between the Gandy Bridge and the Courtney Campbell Causeway, and that he sat on the State Road Board when the Greater Tampa Chamber of Commerce suggested naming the new bridge for him. At the opening ceremony in January 1960, attended by dignitaries including Gov. LeRoy Collins, Frankland said he hoped the bridge would be a real tie of friendship linking Hillsborough and Pinellas counties, as the St. Petersburg Times reported and the county quotes.

The 1960 Howard Frankland Bridge has been removed, after FDOT opened a new southbound bridge in 2025 and shifted traffic onto the newer spans.

For three decades the 1960 bridge carried traffic in both directions. Hillsborough County records that it became the northbound span when a second, parallel bridge for southbound traffic opened in 1990. The county page, last modified January 30, 2024, still describes the work as a proposal FDOT was vetting for the twin-span bridge that would include express lanes, a bicycle path and accommodations for light rail, if approved; FDOT's own project page now reports the work built.

FDOT states that in 2025 it opened the new southbound I-275 bridge to traffic. The 1990s Howard Frankland Bridge, which originally connected Tampa to St. Petersburg, was converted to carry northbound traffic, while the original 1960s bridge was removed. WUSF reported in May 2026 that final work to remove the original bridge had been completed, consistent with FDOT's description.

Storm resilience was part of the design for the Old Tampa Bay crossing. In a November 2023 Tampa Bay bridge crossings resiliency overview posted by Plan Hillsborough, FDOT listed resiliency features for the new Howard Frankland Bridge, including a 6-inch concrete slab (standard and fiber reinforced), new riprap, a roadway barrier wall, a new seawall and bulkhead, flowable fill and a buried marine mattress. FDOT stated that the bridge was designed to provide 1 foot of freeboard above the anticipated wave height of a 100-year storm event. Its listed hardening measures include increasing reinforced concrete from 4 to 6 inches thick, extending the barrier along the retaining wall face, and eliminating the gap between the bulkhead cap and the barrier wall and sidewalk slab.

The Howard Frankland express lanes are tolled lanes in the I-275 median that run from 4th Street North in St. Petersburg to just north of the bridge in Tampa.

FDOT states that the Howard Frankland express lanes are separated from the general-use lanes by barrier walls and flexible plastic poles, and that only passenger vehicles, registered vanpools and buses are allowed in the I-275 express lanes. FDOT's project factsheet repeats the same rules.

Tolling began in the summer of 2026. According to FDOT, as of August 22, 2026, tolls are being collected electronically 24 hours a day, seven days a week, on the Howard Frankland Bridge express lanes through the SunPass Prepaid Toll Program. FDOT's project page and factsheet name the payment method but do not state a per-trip amount, so this page does not list one; drivers can confirm the posted rate with FDOT before using the lanes between Tampa and St. Petersburg.

FDOT also reminds motorists of a newly posted 65 MPH speed limit across the Howard Frankland Bridge, effective August 22, 2026, with the limit reduced to 55 MPH on either side of the bridge because of active construction work zones. The contractor for the bridge project is the Archer Western and Traylor Bros joint venture.

Yes, a 12-foot-wide shared-use path for pedestrians and cyclists runs along the north side of the new Howard Frankland Bridge between Tampa and St. Petersburg.

FDOT describes the path as barrier-separated and nearly seven miles long, with four shaded, sail-adorned overlooks where users can rest above Old Tampa Bay. Access is available every day from sunrise to sunset.

Access on the Tampa side is at the south end of Reo Street, with the St. Petersburg access at the north end of 4th Street. FDOT states that additional future connections from Ulmerton Road and 4th Street North in St. Petersburg, as well as Reo Street in Tampa, are being built under separate active construction projects. 83 Degrees Media, quoting FDOT, reported the same Reo Street and 4th Street access points, in an article published when the path opened.

The Tampa approach to the trail was its own project. FDOT project 447534-1-52-01 built a seawall and shared-use path along the north side of I-275 between Reo Street and the Howard Frankland Bridge, a length of 1.5 miles in Tampa and Hillsborough County. Construction began March 27, 2023, and all construction activities were completed on Friday, November 14, 2025. FDOT states that completed travel lanes will connect from the Westshore Interchange to southbound I-275 as part of that project, so the Tampa shoreline segment serves both the trail and the approach to the bridge.

FDOT lists the Howard Frankland rebuild as a 5.8-mile, $973.4 million project that started in spring 2020 and is expected to be complete in late 2026.

The table below collects the figures FDOT District Seven publishes for the project that links Tampa and St. Petersburg.

Last verified: October 18, 2026, against the FDOT District Seven Howard Frankland and Reo Street project pages, the July 2026 factsheet, the Hillsborough County Faces Behind the Places entry, and the FDOT resiliency overview hosted by Plan Hillsborough.