This week the Florida Department of Transportation unveiled a plan to reduce the speed limit on A1A in Satellite Beach and surrounding areas to 35 miles per hour. It’s something some in beachside communities have wanted for a long time.
Their claim is the move is to reduce pedestrian fatalities along the beachside highway, but the state’s own statistics showed declining numbers of these types of accidents for years before the new, flashing light mid-block crosswalks came into being.
When that happened, the incident numbers began to climb again. A false sense of safety (and traffic control) will do that for you.
By doing this now, after the recent and tragic death of a beachside child over the Christmas holidays, is no less opportunistic and taking advantage of tragedy than those who wanted to take guns from law abiding gun owners after Parkland.
The statistics do not show the need for this action and the tragedy, sad as it is, is not justification.
If you want highways that are designed for vehicular traffic to be safe there is a simple solution. Limit legal pedestrian and bicycle access to the roadways instead of creating new, unfamiliar alleged traffic control devices and putting them in the hands of those pedestrians.
Roadways are for vehicles. Limiting, as opposed to expanding, pedestrian access only makes sense.
And that’s not what city, Transportation Planning officials and FDOT are exhibiting at the moment.
CONGRATULATIONS Ronnie Dougan.
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