- September 19, 2024
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Heading into a new fiscal year, Longboat Key staff are continuing traffic safety enhancement projects with the long-term vision of a complete streets project on Gulf of Mexico Drive still in mind.
This summer, Public Works officials worked with contractors to install traffic calming circles on Broadway Street as part of a pilot project to test their effectiveness. Another project on the south end of Longboat Key is planned to enter construction this fall and will bring safer turn lanes to the Country Club Shores communities.
The Broadway Street intersection with Gulf of Mexico Drive is particularly busy. A popular public beach access point is on one end, and down the opposite side of Broadway Street are popular restaurants Whitney’s, Mar Vista and Shore, along with the Village community.
Traffic safety on Broadway Street was a conversation that began picking up when Town Manager Howard Tipton started with the town in early 2023.
“The residents were wanting different ways to slow the traffic on Broadway as people were heading toward the restaurants, so the traffic circles were a modification of some of the suggestions that were made,” Tipton said.
Director of Public Works Isaac Brownman said the original budget for the project was around $100,000. At the time, the department was still thinking through what the solution would look like.
Typical smaller-scale roundabouts involve striping, roadway adjustments and more involved designs that would have pushed the project toward higher costs. The town moved away from this option, Brownman said.
Instead, the town worked with engineers and devoted $20,000 to traffic analysis on the street. This left $80,000 for the project.
In the end, Brownman said the team decided to work with a company called Transportation Solutions and Lighting to install Traffic Logix Flex Curbs.
The three traffic calming circles are made from specific material that didn’t require cutting into the pavement to install. This also makes it easy to remove the circles in the future for resurfacing projects, or if the circles prove to be ineffective, Brownman said.
For the three circles along Broadway Street, the project cost the town $20,000, which Brownman called a great deal. The contractors finished installation in mid-August.
“So far, we’re happy with them,” Brownman said. “However, we really want to see them perform in peak season, how heavier traffic reacts to them and how they hold up under heavier traffic.”
According to Brownman, the circles in the middle of the road may be too obstructive for larger trucks, and those trucks may need to pass their back wheels over the circles. The material is made to withstand that, though, and the department will wait to see how the circles handle the heavier season traffic.
The three circles were designed as a pilot study to see how they help slow traffic along the busy Broadway Street, or if other options may be better.
“We’re not really contemplating traffic calming circles on other streets right now,” Brownman said. “Broadway is one of the main collector roads we have in town that collects all the traffic from the village … and it has two major restaurants at the end.”
At the intersection of Broadway Street and Gulf of Mexico Drive, the town is continuing conversations with the Florida Department of Transportation about a larger roundabout project.
This roundabout has been a topic of discussion for the town since 2011. In 2023, the town was near 90% completion on designs when the FDOT told town staff the designs would need to be redone due to roadway banking issues.
New designs that the town pursued for the roundabout recently came back with an estimated $5.6 million price tag, which was higher than the original design, expected to be closer to $2 million or $2.5 million.
In June, town commissioners directed Brownman to discuss possible funding solutions with the FDOT and to see if a traffic signal study would be worthwhile to contemplate alternatives to a roundabout.
Nearly eight years in the making, a project adding an enhanced left turn lane along Gulf of Mexico Drive to get to Country Club Shores will begin soon.
The purpose of the project is to improve safety for drivers entering the Country Club Shores communities.
“If you’re traveling south on Gulf of Mexico Drive and you need to turn into one of those streets, you have a safe place to refuge out of the traffic queue,” Brownman said. “And to get out of the traffic queue so you’re not contributing to the backups…this is all really geared toward peak season.”
The project will widen about a 1-mile stretch of Gulf of Mexico Drive. Originally, the town wanted to simply widen the road and stripe a longer left turn lane. This idea was turned down by FDOT, which cited operational and procedural concerns.
This led the town to pursue a more advanced turn lane project, which turned into several individual turn lanes. New designs also included some raised medians and widened bike lanes. The FDOT also added a requirement to mill and repave the new strip of Gulf of Mexico Drive.
Initial design in 2017 cost about $200,000, and since then there has been an ongoing effort for permitting and design, which is more complicated when adding another agency like the FDOT to the mix.
“When you enter in a different agency, the coordination and priorities and everything, it becomes a challenge to get all the stars aligned,” Tipton said. “But I think we’re there.”
At the Sept. 9 Longboat Key Town Commission meeting, Brownman told commissioners that the project bids came in at $2.6 million. The winner of the bid is local company Superior Asphalt Inc.
After adding the FDOT-required construction engineering inspector, the project is expected to be about $1.3 million higher than FDOT’s current $1.4 million reimbursement agreement.
According to Brownman, the town alerted FDOT several years ago that the project would most likely come in higher than $1.4 million, and now town staff are planning to ask FDOT to provide additional funding.
The town hopes the FDOT will contribute more to the project on the state road, but staff also doesn’t want to wait for a response and let the bids expire after 120 days. As of now, the town is prepared to fund $400,000 of the total overage and wants the FDOT to fund an additional $900,000.
If the town needed to fund the entire $1.3 million required, Tipton said it would have to come out of reserves, and he would hope that the FDOT would be able to reimburse the town in the following fiscal year. But the goal remains to secure the reimbursement sooner.
District 1 Commissioner Gary Coffin, whose district includes Country Club Shores, emphasized the importance of the project to the nearly 400 residents of Country Club Shores.
“It’s something that’s fixable,” Coffin said. “It’s something we can do, and it’s something that would really help the residents in that area considerably. It’s dangerous pulling out there, and I’ve been there 20 years.”
Vice Mayor Mike Haycock also said at the Sept. 9 commission meeting he believed the FDOT should reimburse the town for the new cost.
“We need to go forward,” Haycock said. “We need to figure out how to do it.”
Brownman said the town’s goal is to get the project underway sooner rather than later, potentially at the end of September or early October.
The project will take about six months to complete. If the project were to begin in October, that would mean it would be complete about March 2025.
According to Brownman’s discussions with contractors, the goal is to minimize traffic disruption along Gulf of Mexico Drive and avoid closing lanes of traffic.
The Country Club Shores turn lane project, along with projects along Broadway Street, all come together in the town’s long-range complete streets vision.
“It’s a safety enhancement, primarily,” Tipton said of the Country Club Shores project. “It’s a part of the complete streets vision, so it will blend in when that ultimately gets done.”
The town’s complete streets vision along Gulf of Mexico Drive will include roadway improvements, potential roundabouts, landscaped medians, and improved bike lanes and multiuse paths.
Commissioners and staff previously identified a Planning, Development and Environment Study for the complete streets corridor plan as a key request of the Metropolitan Planning Organization and the FDOT in 2026.
