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City of Jacksonville Chief of Traffic Engineering Chris LeDew addresses some of the concerns at the Jan. 15 meeting.<\/p>\nThe City of Jacksonville is hoping to address major traffic and roadway safety concerns for the St. Augustine Road traffic corridor with a road diet later this fall.<\/p>\n
Residents and neighbors had the opportunity to review proposed roadway updates for the busy traffic corridor at a public meeting hosted by District 5 City Councilmember Joe Carlucci at San Jose Elementary School on Thursday, Jan. 15.<\/p>\n
The City of Jacksonville Traffic and Engineering Department is planning a road diet for a two-mile stretch of St. Augustine Road from University Boulevard to Emerson Street, converting the four, undivided lanes to three lanes: one in each direction with a center lane for vehicles to turn left into the commercial spaces on either side of the road.<\/p>\n
To address traffic congestion during school drop-off and pick-up hours, dedicated turn lanes will be designated for buses and vehicles accessing the school, without impacting through traffic in either direction. Additionally, a raised median island will be installed to allow pedestrians to cross St. Augustine Road at the school\u2019s entrance safely. Other updates will include new ADA curb ramps for pedestrians, upgraded crosswalk markings and raised medians at school zone entrances.<\/p>\n
According to City of Jacksonville Traffic Studies Engineer Lee Durban, approximately 11,500 vehicles travel this roadway daily. Matt Fall, the bicycle and pedestrian coordinator for the City of Jacksonville, added that St. Augustine Road is identified as a \u201chigh crash route\u201d for vehicles, pedestrians, motorcycles and cyclists. A crash history shared with meeting attendees indicated that the study area has seen 256 crashes in the last five years, including five pedestrian and four bicycle crashes, and one fatal crash. Eighty-four percent of these crashes occurred during the day.<\/p>\n
Durban said the road diet should help reduce that crash rate by nearly half.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe expect there will be about a 47% crash reduction,\u201d Durban said. \u201cThat\u2019s all types of crashes.\u201d<\/p>\n
Because this project will be rolled into the routine road resurfacing scheduled for St. Augustine Road later this fall, COJ Chief of Traffic and Engineering Chris LeDew said the cost is minimal. This also means it does not have to go through the standard approval process, however it would be done \u201cthrough consensus.\u201d<\/p>\n
City of Jacksonville Chief of Traffic Engineering Chris LeDew addresses some of the concerns at the Jan. 15 meeting.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re taking this opportunity to make a positive safety change for very little money,\u201d LeDew told meeting attendees. \u201cPart of the reason we\u2019re here tonight is to gain consensus from the public. If the council person does not want it, we\u2019re not going to force it.\u201d<\/p>\n
LeDew, however, added his strong support for the project.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs chief of traffic engineering, I think it is an excellent idea,\u201d LeDew said. \u201cI think it is one of the best safety improvements that we can do as traffic engineers. I can tell you this: Four-lane undivided roads have the highest crash rate of any kind of road we have in the state of Florida, so getting rid of them is a high priority.\u201d<\/p>\n
The road diet received mixed reviews, with some attendees claiming these upgrades wouldn\u2019t address the range of issues they see on the roadway daily, including those stemming from the busy intersection at University Boulevard just down the road from the school and from drivers cutting through residential streets to bypass traffic.<\/p>\n
Sol Lopez lives just across the street from the school on Community Road and sees firsthand the amount of speeding and traffic on her street as drivers cut through the area. She shared her thoughts with Carlucci and San Jose Elementary School Principal Jasmin Esparza Gomez before the meeting started.<\/p>\n
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The City of Jacksonville Traffic and Engineering Department is hoping to improve vehicle and pedestrian safety on St. Augustine Road with a road diet. <\/p>\n
\u201cI was letting them know that it would be beneficial \u2013 and it would really fix the issue \u2013 if they would do what they\u2019re trying to do on St. Augustine Road, but they also add speed bumps on Community Road,\u201d Lopez said. \u201cBecause what [drivers] are going to do is they\u2019re going to continue cutting through Community Road, and that\u2019s just going to increase our traffic.\u201d<\/p>\n
Troy Mayhew travels St. Augustine Road every day and said he liked what he saw in the road diet.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe biggest thing for me is cars stopping in the left lane to turn left on St. Augustine Road,\u201d Mayhew said. \u201cI see it all the time, I drive it every day: Cars either not paying attention because everybody\u2019s on their phone and they almost rear-end that person, or they jump right over into the right lane without looking. And I think that that four-lane [road] curb-to-curb with no buffer is really dangerous\u2026I don\u2019t see any downside to [the road diet].\u201d<\/p>\n
Following the meeting, LeDew said piggybacking this project onto the resurfacing already scheduled was low-hanging fruit that offered tremendous rewards.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs far as the cost goes, we\u2019re making very minor changes,\u201d LeDew said. \u201cNow, as far as the safety improvements \u2013 huge safety improvement. So, we see this as a big bang for the buck.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The City of Jacksonville is hoping to address major traffic and roadway safety concerns for the St. Augustine…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":142631,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[116,118,117],"class_list":{"0":"post-142630","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-jacksonville","8":"tag-jacksonville","9":"tag-jacksonville-headlines","10":"tag-jacksonville-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142630","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=142630"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142630\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/142631"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=142630"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=142630"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=142630"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}