1. Pensacola Mayor D.C. Reeves this morning opened his weekly presser with Police Chief Eric Randell addressing the recent shootings and the wave of antisemitic vandalism.
- I asked Chief Randall about the rumored connection between the July 20 shooting on Creighton Road and July 29 shooting on Olive Road:
“Based on the information we continue to receive, there is a possible connection. I say possible connection, because as you know, with any of these investigations can turn on a dime based on the information that you get.”
- The chief had a message for those vandalizing the Jewish synagogues:
“My message to the person or persons involved is we’re going to find you…We’re using every tool in our toolbox to find the person or person’s responsible, and when we will use every aspect of the law to prosecute the individual or individuals involved.”
2. At the District 1 town hall last week, citizens questioned the wide difference in traffic counts on Summit Boulevard between the 2019 FDOT survey and one does recently. Councilwoman Jennifer Brahier said on my radio show this morning that she would like city staff to examine the differences.
- Mayor Reeves said he is waiting out city’s public works team to get all of the data and feedback back from those public input sessions held about the future of Summit Boulevard.
“I believe it’s scheduled for next week that I’m meeting with them to see basically what the downloads from the two meetings, but also remember converging in this right now is we have an active transportation plan that was upwards of $200,000 that was paid for and started well over a year ago that addresses these issues, not just on one street, but also all over the city.”
- He plans to examine what is the greatest need of investment to creating an active transportation plan? Where are we having the most fatalities, the most injuries, the most issues, etc. before making any decisions on Summit or Ninth Avenue or anywhere else.
3. Since the homeless camp in the Brent area has been evacuated, I have notice more people sleeping on the sidewalks and doorways along South Palafox Street -this morning’s count was 10. Mayor Reeves said he has received more emails. He said he has an upcoming meeting scheduled with county officials to discuss long-term solutions.
“At the end of the day, we’ve got to provide the places for people to go…Enforcement of our rules and ordinances becomes much easier when we have the avenue of saying, ‘Hey, you know, there’s somewhere for you to go.’ And without a low shelter, I don’t know that we can all truly say that yet.”
Road diets: sigh.
I don’t have a dog in the fight on this Summit diet, other than just waiting for the outcome to decide whether we take one more road off the list of ones we’ll use. We avoid Cervantes in the area of the baby gates like the plague now, unless we are planning on going to one of the shops on that stretch. But then, that’s of course the point of road diets. They are marketed as slowing cars down, but what they actually do is push a good percentage of cars off a throughway or arterial and into alternate routes and neighborhoods.
Per the traffic studies, they don’t have to be “nefarious” to be fixed. I guess it all depends on your tolerance of everything being fair in love, war, and traffic planning. I’ve never seen a single–not one–traffic study done by either a government agency or a private vendor that you couldn’t poke holes in, and many of them are laughably and overtly biased. Watching paid traffic experts get up for developers at Planning meetings, I often wonder how they keep a straight face with their “statistics” (note I did not call them “lies” or “damn lies.”) Watching government agencies try to keep a poker face while they claim that our current roads can handle giant new developments, I have great empathy for staff forced to twist themselves into knots to adhere to the overriding BUILD IT ethos of our local governing bodies. And watching road diet advocates in action, I ask myself constantly if they actually believe what they are dishing out, or if they’re well aware that diets are often the stuff of special interest gentrification (a rare example is Brownsville, which seems to be more an intentional business and throughfare killer to do advance work towards gentrification).
How charming the pastoral dream when bike ped folks sang the mixed use dream of walkable/bikeable Shagri-La with the residential town home build-out in the heart of Navy Point; how different the outcome will be in reality, for both the current residents and the future ones, as Sunset Blvd and the quiet adjacent streets struggle to handle an influx of 100+ cars on a road that services a boat ramp that already has people complaining about it being a race track–people cutting through to the Front Gate, because the traffic on Gulf Beach Highway is so hopelessly and eternally clogged. Guess we’ll have to road diet Sunset to fix the traffic capacity problems too; Lord knows the speed bumps do nothing but mess with boat trailers, vehicle chassies, and emergency vehicle response time.
These thoughts aren’t targeted at Summit in particular, but the absurd concept of road diets in a town that has half the road capacity it needs already. At the County, David Forte was replaced as Special Traffic manager by a person who had screwed up a major road in another city so badly with a road diet she had an ethics complaint brought against her. Et voila her legacy in Escambia: the Johnson Beach roundabout. Even worse, all of us who struggle to get across town from the West Side through any avenue but the misery of Navy Blvd and Fairfield Ave now have a road diet on Pace Blvd–PACE BOULEVARD–hanging over us like the sword of Damocles, no doubt dependent upon who purchases the waterfront properties in that area and how many luxury condos will benefit from a bougie road diet on that stretch.
Over and over I’ve asked the question of people advocating for these road diets “Okay. So what new capacity is planned to handle the offset?” The answer to that is of course crickets, because there never is any. I’ve lived in places that have successfully implemented wonderful walkable bikeable–the ped mall in Iowa City, the reconfiguration of Center City Philadelphia streets for east-west bike lanes, the Rose Kennedy Greenway in Boston, the (ephemeral) revitalization of historic downtown Orlando. None of those plans would have been successful without *major* spends on increasing infrastructure to offset capacity, and the revitalization of downtown Orlando died when Disney bait and switched the light rail.
On the opposite end of the stick is my small home town in Iowa (7000 people), which like so many flourishing small towns that had a state road or federal highway running through its downtown area, rerouted through traffic off the historic man drag (think American Graffiti). The effect on thriving small businesses on a historic stretch of a downtown that was once known as the midwestern Hub City was absolutely devastating.
I understand the pros, and get why the people who live along that road would desire such a thing. I guess I just wish that truly honest and candid conversations could take place about it, without pretending that the traffic stats weren’t cherry picked, like they typically are for one side. It would be great to have another traffic study that lifts the thumbs off the scale that Mr. Peterson is more politic about addressing than I am. Unless and until that happens, there’s still only one “traffic study” I’ve ever trusted, which was my own count through public record of cars off the Bob Skies bridge on any given Saturday, which was one of the nails in the coffin of the Via de Luna/Fort Pickens roundabout when Volkert had to admit the stats were right, and that as a result the roundabout was expected to fail. Pretty much every weekend in season. There was a County traffic study done on Johnson Beach road as well; now it surfaces that DOT had adamantly advised against a roundabout at that location years ago, when traffic was far less than it is now. Now the supporters of that disaster have headed for the hills; nobody will own their desire for it, and everybody recognizes it was a disaster. In other words, like so many things, be careful what you wish for.
For what it’s worth, the FDOT numbers are Average Annual Daily Traffic Counts, which I believe is (total estimated trips per year / 365 days). This probably averages out to a lower number if you include summer and holiday breaks where there aren’t kids going to school, playing ball, etc.
The Summit Blvd study did their traffic count in early May 2022. So you’ve got school in session, baseball being played at Roger Scott, after-school care at Vickery Center, etc.
I don’t think it’s anything nefarious. Just a different time and scope of measurement.
Most important is that neither number – FDOT or Summit Study – require Summit to be a four-lane road. Just sayin’…..