By Gary Sammons
At the behest of two city council members (Jared Moore and Jennifer Brahier), the city council voted to spend up to $75,000 from the American Rescue Plan, for a study to restrict traffic flow on an arterial road that assists the free flow of traffic from Scenic Hwy. to medical facilities, the Pensacola International Airport, very popular shopping, and entertainment sites. Plus, the fire station on Summit would be affected.
When this first went public, Council member Moore, was quoted in a PNJ article posted, on Feb. 9, 2022, by Jim Little, calling Summit Blvd a speedway, and saying he felt unsafe walking to Baskin Robbin’s to get ice cream. Council member Brahier was quoted as saying it was to “help with parking for the YMCA, and Roger Scott. She told me that personally last year, though she later backed off and implied those were just potential by-products of the effort.
During a three-day monitoring period between May 5 and May 7, the Consulting/Engineering group(s) hired by the city, established the all-vehicle average speed for the study area on Summit at just over 38 mph (The speed limit is 35mph). Granted, the statistic championed on the city’s Active Transportation website is 42.6 mph, but that average comes from just the fastest 15 percent of vehicles, and even cherry-picking the number by excluding the other 85% of vehicles, produces an average speed of less than 10 mph over the speed limit. Hardly enough to call it a speedway, and it would likely appear quite safe when compared to many two-lane arterial/commuter roads.
The data proves it’s not about speed, plus, speeding is not restricted to four-lane roads. Odds are, bottling up Summit would cause more drivers prone to speeding or in a hurry to take cut-throughs like Firestone and Piedmont, resulting in less safe neighborhood roads. You see, roads don’t speed, people do!
So maybe it’s safety. This is where the plot thickens.
On January 13, 2022, the City’s own Active Transportation presentation showed zero auto accidents and pedestrian/bicycle accidents. That’s right, zero, for the four-year period 2016 thru 2020.
If you look at that website today, 68 miraculously appeared, yet there are zero details about these new accidents. So, with a follow-up visit to the official “Target Zero Traffic Safety Dashboard,” you find this data is not supported by official crash records which still show zero accidents and only one fatal accident in the past 16 years. The fatal accident occurred in 2010.
It appears someone put forth a concerted effort to anecdotally muster up some accidents for the study. It would not qualify as good statistical, engineering, or credible data. If there is documentation, let’s see it. Let us see the police reports, accident reports, insurance claims, heck even bicycle repairs indicating there were this many accidents with a vehicle. Otherwise, I think the words we should use to describe this kind of data include biased and anecdotal at best.
If the area was dangerous, why would bike groups/clubs routinely ride the road? Surely they have at least some self preservation. The answer is because it’s safe, convenient, and they can get a ride of at least 20 miles without much difficulty.
As an avid cyclist, previous runner, and current walker, who can be found on Summit Blvd at least 4 days a week performing one of those activities, and have been doing so for over 20 years, I find it safe, cycling friendly, and it has a great sidewalk for those that don’t want to ride the asphalt. All this makes me wonder if Council member Moore ever feels safe.
As a huge fan of cycling-friendly communities, and buffered cycling lanes or trails, I applaud logical approaches. I wish this proposal qualified.
A logical, tactical plan to create a more cycling, pedestrian-friendly community would be welcome, but 1.5 miles when you can use roads like Piedmont and Firestone, add miles and reduce cycling time on Summit is not logical. Walking is not an issue, you can walk the sidewalk all the way to Baskin Robbin’s if you live in Cordova Park and are brave enough to cross a very safe four-lane road, which their study says is not congested. In fact, you can go all the way around the airport on the sidewalk. There is even a walking trail that was created by a LEAP project a while back connecting to Summit Blvd.
As it sits today, it looks like a fix to a problem that doesn’t exist, caters to a small minority of the population who use the road for cycling, doesn’t serve the rest of the city’s residents very well and is a waste of our tax dollars.
But, if the council feels they need to do this, why not test it first? Cone and barrel two of the lanes off. You could probably even do it on each side of the road. Put up a few flashing signs and leave it that way for at least a month or better yet, two months. Do it in September and October, so you avoid the madness of “beginning of school year traffic” till it settles down, and the holiday traffic that kicks up in November. It’s done for runs, cycling events, and road maintenance so cyclists and drivers are used to it. If the council just has a thing for doing it, let’s get a real feel for how it works and then ask the taxpaying citizens of the city what they prefer.
Better to test it this way before doing something more permanent, like back in parking on Palafox that really never made sense, and then having to reverse course.
Thanks for providing this information, Gary. Being a West Sider, it’s none of my business what happens with Summit in particular, other than if it gets dieted that will be one less road we drive on, just as we no longer drive Cervantes in the section of the cheese grater baby gates. That’s not to say we won’t drive around there. We will find a way.
What do we do instead? Drive through neighborhoods. We drive through those neighborhoods carefully, always expecting a child or a dog to dart out when we’re not expecting it. Many don’t. But we will, like many reasonable people, not drive a road that has been dieted to slow down traffic.
The thing that kills me about the road diet craze is it’s not as if there is more infrastructure in the works to offset the diets. Nobody will meet a bigger tree-hugger than me, but here’s a news flash to those who think these diets will “cure” driving: good luck with that. It’s an idealistic and heavy-handed approach that will only result in screwing up the road for through traffic and putting more pressure on side roads. And most often, there is wealthy special interest at the heart of it.
For anybody thinking, Well Mel, wouldn’t you like a diet in front of your house? I expended a great deal of time and energy getting pointless, loud, and car damaging speed bumps carved out of our block in Navy Point so we had one more way left to come and go from the Point without being hindered by NIMBY dreams.
Do I love the environment? So much it breaks my heart to see what this town does with it. Will traffic calming scenarios help it? Nope, not one whit. Why? Because people, including myself, love to drive, and this country was born and made great on mobilization and the freedom to move, not on stalling it out for wealthy areas of town pretending that there are traffic problems when there aren’t. (CJ, blast Councilwoman Brahier all you want, but at least she calls it like it is.) Man would I love to see the bike ped group spend as much energy fighting the developers they are out in front for, perhaps unwittingly.
Escambia County hasn’t had any great infrastructure improvements since the Banty Rooster made it rain here from Tallahassee (aside from the after life). DOT could care less about Escambia, because the voters here will continue to return republicans regardless of how crap their road system and infrastructure is. Gene Valentino moved mountains to get four-laning on critical roads on Perdido and Sorrento–only to be voted out of office for road-killing Doug Underhill. FDOT has been drawing straws in Chipley for a long time now when a call comes in from Escambia, and most of that has to do with Doug providing a convenient excuse for putting the money elsewhere.
Traffic calming works well in focused, targeted spots where it actually makes sense. Beyond that, when it is applied to a major traffic mover, it’s an effer-upper. Unfortunately, it has become the mantra for folks who believe in certain aspects of the CivicCon dreams that have never, and will never, come to fruition. And yet, still the bike-ped people throw themselves out there like the sacrificial lambs, again and again, thinking that–maybe THIS time–we’ll get what we were promised.
How did the 17th street roundabout work out, guys? Everything that you ever wanted and so much more? You’re being used.
Speaking of roundabouts, anybody member when some of us spent two years fighting the hoteliers on the roundabout out on the Beach, insisting it was an unworkable design meant to stall traffic rather than assist it? Even though the engineering firm was forced to admit, in public record print, that my stats–an English major, doing math–were right and the roundabout would fail on any given Saturday from JUST the Bob Sykes bridge alone, The special interest traffic stallers STILL argued for it. (The hoteliers know I know *exactly* what I am talking about, and what their ends were.) Thank goodness Robert Bender got to office and put a stop to that nonsense. And now, voila!, the disaster out in Perdido that Doug instigated and Commissioner Bergosh is going to have to correct is the here and now example of what happens when people who want to stall traffic to wealthy up an area and keep the common folk off a road rule the day.
Rick, making a request that when the City people are done agonizing over whether to Studer-style mess up one of their key roads or not, we can get to a discussion of the City’s plan to road diet Pace Boulevard and screw up all of the West Side even more as a result. That’s not knocking the current mayor, as that insane and absurd idea was cooked up under Grover, with an eye towards developing the shoreline for condo towers.
One last thought: nobody who has any understanding of politics and any basic sense in their head trusts a bought and paid for traffic study by *any* entity–private, commercial, or governmental. That’s why I had to get the traffic stats off the Bob Sykes by public record, so I could crunch the numbers myself. And it’s truly sad that while math literally hurts my brain, the most basic arithmetic was all that was needed to demonstrate the Pensacola Beach roundabout would fail–this ain’t calculus, folks. It was politics and money out on Pensacola Beach, and it is politics and money on Summit.
Thank goodness we don’t have enough need for that road that we have to worry about it. If Councilman Moore wants to screw up the traffic in an entire quadrant of the City because his wife works for Studer, ain’t my thing.
Hope you’ll post this long comment in lieu of an official viewpoint. :)
Gary makes very good Points, especially regarding speed and safety data manipulation!
I might add that this was never really about bikes, safety or speed. It’s what happens when climate activists like Elaine Sargent (Director of the Pensacola chapter of the radical climate extremist & political activist orgainization called 350.org) are allowed to hijack city planning policy by being selected to head Pensacola’s Climate Mitigation Task Force that was assembled in 2014 by City Council under resolution 29-14. The Bike Lane Confiscation (i.e. Road Diet) and Traffic Constriction (i.e. calming) device campaigns currently in force throughout Pensacola are a direct result of the Task Force’s final report published in 2018, which was the birth-parent of Pensacola’s Active Transportation Committee tasked to constrict automobile travel in the name of climate change. The Transporation section of that report states its objective is to “Advance transportation choices that reduce fossil fuel use and reduce vehicle miles traveled to increase the City’s resilience to climate change.” Safety and speed are merely tactical mantras used as a means to an end – even if data needs to be manipulated to promote what appears to be an anti-automobile agenda. It’s time to help city council stand up from its knee-bent genuflection it currently displays in reverence toward the climate cultologists.
Thanks to Mr. Sammons for his fact-based opinion piece. Facts are often missing from the usual results-based decision-making in city hall. Basically, city hall decides what it wants to do, or what someone wants it to do, and then the facts are selected or manufactured to make the case. During my 15 years monitoring city hall, I have regularly seen the executive branch distort facts, hide facts and make-up facts. The council should exercise its legislative oversight powers to require a presentation by the “someone” to explain the discrepancy in accident numbers. Maybe it is explainable, or maybe not in which case “someone” should be held to account. I live in Scenic Heights off Hilltop between Creighton and Langley. I often drive on Summit too. I believe the city also has to assess the Santa Rosa County commuter issue in the northeast part of the city. Each morning there is a flow of vehicles entering the northeast part of the city moving north to south and each afternoon there is a reverse flow. The topic is very briefly alluded to on page 22 of the ATP plan. Mr. Sammons mentions the hysterical PNJ story in which Councilman Moore expressed his exasperation that he and his family feel unsafe walking nearly a mile mostly on people’s front lawns to get ice cream at Baskin Robbins. (DoorDash delivers.) For some strange reason, the PNJ chose to emphasis the Baskin Robbins comment. FYI, the actual publication date was February 10, 2022. If anyone wants to read the entire print story it can be accessed via the West Florida Public Library website. I do think there may be a need for a four-way traffic light at the intersection where Summit ties into McClellan to the south and Airfield to the north. (Moore lives on the southwest corner across from Cordova Park Elementary School.) Four cross-walks there seems a good idea. Some easy fixes as both Mr. Sammons and Travis Peterson suggest seem good starts. I also believe that the city council should adopt an ordinance requiring bicyclists, skateboarders, in-line skaters, scooter people, etc. to wear safety helmets. State law gives the city council the power to do it but they seem to lack the political will. I would also prohibit the on-site consumption of alcoholic beverages in all city parks to include at the Roger Scott Tennis Center where the for-profit Gulf Coast Tennis Group, LLC hosts alcohol-focused events and then people get in their cars and drive on Summit Boulevard. I have seen it.
Hey Gary!
It’s worth noting that Councilman Moore, along with some of us advocating for “something” along Summit Boulevard, wanted to start with just what you suggested – a pilot project. Throw up some barrels, or even those plastic bollards like on the 12th Ave / Summit merge, and see how it goes. That was the original intent, as I recall.
I even advocated to City Council against spending the $$$ on a traffic study, when we could spend $10K or $25K on a pilot project and see what happens. I’m still not sure how that got turned into a $75K study (and a year or two delay), but that wasn’t the first option.
I’m sure smarter people can explain why the accidents didn’t show up on one report and did on another (maybe FDOT vs local PPD reporting?). That’s a good point that should get addressed.
See you on Summit…(or at the Y!)