Last night, the Pensacola City Council approved Mayor D.C. Reeves’ recommendation to relocate $490,000 and $310,000 Housing Assistance for facility reorganization and security upgrades at Pensacola City Hall and to contribution to the Florida Department of Transportation’s redesign of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Drive and Davis Highway.
At his weekly press conference, the mayor said the contribution to FDOT would help the agency create plans to convert the two one-way streets to accommodate traffic in both directions. He said the one-way streets have had a negative impact on the surrounding neighborhoods.
“They dissect our neighborhoods and two-way streets; you can look at the data, and it is unanimous that two-way streets mean slower traffic, which means fewer crashes and fatalities. We’ve totaled up those numbers. I don’t have ’em off the top of my head, but hundreds of incidents of crashes speeding,” said Mayor Reeves.
He pointed out that FDOT has plans to resurface the two streets, which would mean they would remain one-way “for generations.”
“We have a very small window of opportunity to help inject some funding into FDOT’s design that would help design them as two-way streets,” he said. “Now, we believe the lift of that construction and the cost difference is going to be significant, something like $5 or $6 million additionally because there’s lots of work that has to go into two weighing those, but if we don’t take action now, it will never happen.”
Mayor Reeves said neighbors complained about the one-way streets during the public input process for the Eastside Community Redevelopment Agency strategic plan, and County Commissioner Lumon May expressed support for changing the roads.
“I’m working alongside Commissioner May. I know he’s excited about this, and hopefully, the county will be putting up some funding as well,” the mayor said. “We all have a vested interest in this. We don’t want to say we’re just doing the Hollice T. Williams project to reconnect the community and have further disconnection happening on MLK and Davis.”