Clogged roads anomaly, or is Vero Beach area now trying to catch up to growth? | Opinion
If you’ve been driving around town and thought something’s amiss, you’re not alone.
And you can’t blame local traffic on Donald Trump or Joe Biden.
In a little more than a week, here’s what I’ve seen:
Traffic so bumper to bumper on State Road A1A north of Vero Beach vehicles couldn’t move more than 20 or 25 mph.
Eastbound vehicles lined up nearly halfway to the Alma Lee Loy Bridge hoping to make a left onto A1A.
About 40 northbound cars lined up on 43rd Avenue Southwest waiting for the traffic light at Oslo Road.
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Palm Beach Daily News editorial: We need collaborative strategy to cope with growth
Broward County, here we come?
This is not the sleepy Indian River County I moved to 38 years ago, several years before its population increased to 90,208 in 1990.
Congestion did not happen overnight. The county’s population has grown steadily, reaching 162,518 by 2020, according to the U.S. Census. It’s estimated to be 166,316 now.
The traffic backups I see around the county, including occasional lengthy waits on roads such as 43rd and 27th avenues, remind me of what I saw in places such as Longboat Key (Sarasota County), Delray Beach (Palm Beach County) and Valrico (Hillsborough County) 30 years ago.
Phil Matson, the county's planning director, said counties like this did not benefit from procedures developed in the mid-1980s that helped transportation planners more accurately anticipate where roads would be needed. Some of the congestion now in Indian River relates to road and rail construction, post-COVID tourism and a booming real estate market, Matson said.
I'd hoped Indian River County would benefit from efforts here in the 1970s and 1980s, such as:
Limiting building heights.
Completing, after divisive debates, the Alma Lee Loy Bridge, the Twin Pairs and widening State Road 60 to three lanes each way from 20th to 43rd Avenue.
Building Indian River Boulevard, east of U.S. 1 from 4th to 53rd streets.
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What would things be like if ... ?
Can you imagine how bad things would be without these roads, or widening State Road 60 and County Road 510 to Interstate 95? What if 66th Avenue weren't extended south of State Road 60 or eventually widened to 510?
I still can’t imagine anyone — given our history and potential growth — wanting to eliminate lanes of traffic, such as cutting State Road 60 from seven to four lanes through downtown Vero Beach.
Interestingly, I heard about another “road diet” the other day in my son's Houston neighborhood. Not surprisingly, cutting four lanes of traffic to two has backed up traffic and caused motorists to take alternate routes through once-quiet streets. The change comes despite thousands of apartments planned to be built nearby.
The project sparked citizen outcry and formation of the Alliance for Reasonable Traffic Solutions.
The Alliance, which includes bicycle enthusiasts, supports middle-ground solutions to accommodate pedestrians, bicyclists, motorists and property owners as opposed to making radical changes.
Closer to home, the Palm Beach Town Council and a daily newspaper hope to mitigate gridlock.
“The floodgates have opened,” a recent Palm Beach Daily News editorial began. “It seems everybody wants to be in Palm Beach County. And it's only going to get worse.”
Sound familiar?
Vero Beach City Council, when led by Mayor Robbie Brackett, now a state representative, often talked about how growth in the county, which the city cannot control, would lead to more people visiting the city, its beaches and oceanside shopping district.
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Does Vero Beach want to be like Palm Beach?
At 9,280, the town of Palm Beach’s population is a little more than half of Vero Beach’s. Yet it has similar issues as a people magnet.
Interestingly, Palm Beach County, nine times the size of Indian River County, grew by 75% from 1990 to 2020. Indian River grew by 79% — and that’s before the impact of annexations that could lead to 100,000 or more people in Fellsmere, which now stretches east of I-95 and almost to State Road 60, and, to a lesser degree, Sebastian.
The Daily News wrote its editorial after listening to Stephen Ross, developer and owner of the Miami Dolphins.
“You can say: ‘No growth.’ That’s a nice thing to believe in, but it’s happening with or without us," Ross said. ''And the question is: How do you take the growth (and) how do you work with it? How do you make it better for everybody else?”
The editorial mentioned efforts to stem traffic on the island: limiting hours when contractors can work and capping the number of restaurants, for example. These are radical solutions compared to asking employees of businesses on Vero’s beach to park a few blocks away so shoppers and diners can park closer.
The newspaper editorial, among other things, urged the town to discuss solutions more with West Palm Beach and county officials.
More intra-county comprehensive planning like this might help us, too.
If we don't want to be like Palm Beach ― and instead try to preserve our quality of life before it's gone ― we must work together to plan ahead and maintain the things we really care about.
This column reflects the opinion of Laurence Reisman. Contact him via email at larry.reisman@tcpalm.com, phone at 772-978-2223, Facebook.com/larryreisman or Twitter @LaurenceReisman.
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This article originally appeared on Treasure Coast Newspapers: Been in traffic jam? Seems like Vero Beach area behind curve | Opinion
