- March 30, 2025
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Maybe a load of engineers from the Florida Department of Transportation should be transported in a Department of Corrections van to Longboat Key, and as punishment, be ordered to sit at the intersection of Gulf of Mexico Drive and Outrigger Lane at 8 a.m. multiple weekdays and a Saturday to try to make a left turn out of Outrigger onto GMD.
Good luck, fellas.
Perhaps then they would realize their designs for left turn lanes for the 10 streets on the south end of Longboat Key, unless modified, are likely to make things worse, not better.
If you can strain your eyes to read the above designs, you’re likely to see the words “curbed median.”
What? Curbed median?
When Country Club Shores Unit IV residents recently learned for the first time that the turn-lane plans include five raised and landscaped medians, they reacted with more than an emphatic “What!?”
Actually, there is a lot to unpack here. Not only with what is about to happen with the 12 turn lanes, but when you step back and think about what has been transpiring at Town Hall, you can get the sense there is a communication vacuum.
Is this a pattern? A trend? Or just a one-off happenstance?
You remember 2024. To many Longboat residents’ surprise, they learned Sarasota County would be building an $11 million library at the Town Center Green. It was a deal Mayor Ken Schneier and former Town Manager Tom Harmer crafted with the Sarasota County Commission and county staff.
In the wake of the failure of the town developing a community, education and arts center with the Ringling School of Art and Design, Schneier and Harmer essentially took it upon themselves to secure funding from the county and decide what and where such a facility would go.
When these plans came to light, to many residents’ surprise, they came across as a done deal. This is it; the town can’t turn back; there are no other options or alternatives. It’s free money and a free library building from the county. All Longboaters needed to do was raise $3 million to have what Longboaters have long wanted — a community center to go along with the library.
Yes, there were two public meetings for residents to offer suggestions. But in reality, they were perfunctory.
The whole thing has been a top-down decision.
Now come the left turn lanes on the southern end of GMD, aka State Road 789. If you look closely at the top of the accompanying Google map, you can see how Gulf of Mexico Drive narrows from being three lanes wide down to two just south of the entrance to Country Club Shores Unit IV.
That narrowing creates constant bottlenecks, with cars stopped as they wait for an opening to turn left.
Former Town Commissioner Lynn Larson remembers raising the need for the turn lanes as far back as 2013. Assistant Town Manager Isaac Brownman said it has taken the town eight years to push FDOT to finally provide the funding.
So voila! FDOT informs the town that construction is starting now — at the height of seasonal traffic (You’ve got to be kidding!), and, oh, yeah, here are the designs. Another done deal. No time for citizen feedback.
But there is a reason for everything (as we learned after the fact).
Brownman told us there will be five raised medians installed. Four will be 150 to 200 feet long. All will have ground vegetation planted in them. One — at the entrance to County Club Shores Unit IV — will be 450 feet long and have Florida thatched palm trees planted.
If you look closely above at the design for Ketch Lane, which is similar to the others with curbed medians, to turn left from Ketch onto Gulf of Mexico Drive, cars, delivery trucks and service vehicles would have to pull out perpendicular to Gulf of Mexico Drive — straight out — and make a quick 90-degree left turn.
In the real world, Longboaters know that’s not workable. You need ample time on both sides of Gulf of Mexico Drive to pull that off safely.
Indeed, everyone who turns left anywhere onto Gulf of Mexico Drive knows that in most instances you must dart out at a 50- or 45-degree angle and punch the gas like a maniac to get a head of speed to make it safely onto the road.
Of course, some motorists use that third middle lane as a way station — to get halfway onto GMD and then merge into traffic.
FDOT officials and engineers hate that. They hate even more when someone uses the third lane to pass a slow driver.
Their answer: raised, curbed medians. And: Reduce the speed limit from 45 to 40 mph.
Never mind that the middle turn lane actually works. Never mind what the people who drive on GMD every day know or want. There apparently was no need to engage them before the designs were sealed.
So it comes as no surprise again that once residents learned of the medians, they protested. And predictably, this has created a delicate situation for the town administration. It doesn’t want to peeve FDOT and lose the funding.
Brownman told us the town is asking FDOT if it can slightly modify the designs as “field changes,” rather than redrawing the designs. He said the town is requesting that the end-caps on the north side of the medians be shortened to allow for cars entering Gulf of Mexico Drive to do so at an angle.
Clearly, you can see all this could have been avoided with advanced communication. It’s almost a truism: how lack of communication triggers conflicts and misunderstandings.
There is a lesson here. And it applies to what is known as the “Gulf of Mexico Drive Complete Street Corridor.”
Longboat Observer Staff Writer Carter Weinhofer has reported on this massive project. But few Longboaters know the scope of it.
The illustration below shows what is envisioned for the entire length of Gulf of Mexico Drive — a project estimated at $30 million.
Its birth was back on Nov. 15, 2021, when the Kimley-Horn engineering firm presented the plan for the first time to the Town Commission. Commissioners discussed it again March 21, 2022.
Then on May 3, 2022, the town conducted a public workshop. Kimley-Horn reported, “The community was well represented with bicycle enthusiasts, full-time residents and town commissioners … 15 participants signed in on the workshop sign-in sheet.”
The town advertised the meeting on Facebook and Twitter, and the town manager included a notice of the meeting in his May 2022 Town Manager Brief.
On Dec. 12, 2022, the final project and plans were presented to the Town Commission. A done deal.
Are you aware of this pending complete transformation of Gulf of Mexico Drive?
Apparently, it’s moving forward. The report says the Metropolitan Planning Organization has identified $18.4 million in funding for the project between 2026 and 2030.
Given the scope of this project and what has transpired with the library and GMD turn lanes, let’s hope town commissioners and the town administration get the message, which is: the importance of overcommunicating and over-engaging constituents before a decision is cast in concrete.
