Our View: 44th Avenue handled well

In the end, Manatee County commissioners made the right compromise for traffic and for neighbors.

The county needs to extend 44th Avenue to Interstate 75 for traffic-flow reasons, and the engineers said future travel requirements show the road needs to be four lanes.

Residents whose property backs up to the road right of way understandably objected. They did not want any road ideally, but barring that, they wanted it narrowed from four lanes to two lanes and the speed limit reduced from 45 mph to 35 mph.

Commissioners voted last week to build the road with all four lanes, but narrow the lanes from 12 feet to 11 feet and put the speed limit at 35 mph. Plus, a hedge will be planted for privacy by the county, and once established after 90 days, the homeowners will be responsible for maintaining it.

The result is a sensible compromise, and the fact only two people were at the public hearing to speak before the vote showed that the county’s efforts to work with the neighbors’ worries were largely successful.

The four-lane road has been in the county’s long-range Comprehensive Plan for 20 years. Eventually, it will go over I-75 and connect with Lakewood Ranch. Yet the County Commission approved two developments in the path of the road in 2002, leaving a confined right of way. Nonetheless, the road is needed, and the county has spent $8.2 million on the $50 million east-west road extension so far.

But residents from nearby developments — Highland Ridge and Oak Trace — opposed it. And standing in their backyards, one can see why. They have an open green space right now. Who would want a road through there? But the road was planned long before the developments and in the county’s plan when people bought their homes. There is some responsibility on the part of homebuyers to know what they are getting into.

Commissioners originally asked staff to see if the road could be narrowed to two lanes and the speed limit slowed. Two lanes was probably a bad compromise, because the obvious result of a road that is two lanes and slow compared to four lanes and faster is that traffic will become clogged.

Eliminating the road was not an option. Narrowing it would have been an unwise, short-term compromise that future commissions would have had to deal with.

So commissioners compromised and did the right thing approving the four-lane road. But they were also right to take neighborhood worries into account with the narrower lanes, slower speeds and vegetative buffer. Those changes will make the extended 44th Avenue safer for drivers and pedestrians and more acceptable for neighbors.