Navarre Bridge can no longer handle Blue Angel's traffic. Residents demand solution before show.

A record number of vehicles passed over the Navarre Beach Causeway Bridge over Memorial Day weekend, creating congestion heading onto and off of the island and spurring calls for Santa Rosa County officials to be prepared in advance for next month's Blue Angels Air Show.

In an email sent to county commissioners, Jim Sutton, the president of the Navarre Beach Leaseholders and Residents Association, revisited a nightmare scenario he said occurred last year as vehicles leaving the Pensacola Beach airshow made their way east along State Road 399 (Gulf Boulevard) through Navarre Beach to gain access to U.S. Highway 98 by crossing the Causeway bridge.

"You'll recall last year's departing traffic streaming east through Navarre Beach caused seven-hour bumper-to-bumper emergencies for families in cars, including running out of water, food, gasoline for idling cars, emergency calls to 911/Navarre Beach Fire Department and people using the bathroom along Rt 399 and Navarre Beach resident's properties," the message said. "Navarre Beach Residents emphatically implore you plan for this year's event and the anticipated traffic."'

Attached to Sutton's email was a traffic study conducted for the county over the Memorial Day weekend that had been forwarded via email to a Leaseholder Association member by Michael Schmidt, Santa Rosa County's public works director.

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"It was a record-breaking weekend for both Pensacola and Navarre Beach," Schmidt reported. "Pensacola Beach had 24,522 southbound vehicles, beating the record set a couple of weekends ago by a few hundred. Navarre Beach had 9,660 southbound vehicles, beating its record by around a hundred since we started recording volumes in June last year."

The report provided by Schmidt shows that the 9,660 vehicle count occurred on Saturday. As of 11:30 a.m. that day, congestion caused by vehicles turning from both the east and westbound lanes of U.S. 98 onto the single southbound lane on the Navarre Beach Causeway Bridge impacted the flow of traffic on 98.

The time estimated to cross the bridge was calculated at just under 15 minutes.

At 3 p.m. the same day, the report states, congestion built up on Gulf Boulevard as vehicles lined up to move back north over the bridge to U.S. 98. The traffic didn't clear until 8:45 p.m., according to the report.

Traffic was also heavy on Sunday, when 9,236 vehicles crossed the bridge between 9 a.m. and 6 p.m., according to the report. Backups began occurring around 10:30 a.m. and traffic snarls were exacerbated just after noon by an accident. People started their northbound trek back across the bridge at around 4:30 p.m. and congestion did not clear until 9:10 p.m., the report said.

"The congestion is due to oversaturated conditions and slow moving traffic on the bridge," the report states. "It was likely due to the large traffic volumes that arrived in a short period of time on the two-lane Navarre Beach Causeway corridor, causing saturated conditions."

The Navarre Beach Causeway Bridge is a two-lane span built in 1960. It is listed by the Florida Department of Transportation as "functionally obsolete," which is a term given to roads that "do not meet the state's current roadway design standards."

As recently as 2016, SR 399, a segment of which includes the bridge, was listed at half capacity for its constructed level of service. Studies compiled at that time, however, forecast increased pressure on the road, and particularly the bridge, as the area developed.

These days, though recently selected as one of the nation's "best secret beaches," the popularity of Navarre Beach has exploded, and county officials are only now beginning to grapple with the need to expand the bridge that feeds onto and off of the beach to alleviate congestion headaches like those encountered over Memorial Day.

County Commissioner Ray Eddington, in whose district Navarre Beach lies, said that county staff are looking for ways to fund a planning, development and environmental study to determine a best way forward for building a wider and higher Navarre Beach bridge. Actual construction, which the county would be responsible for paying for, is believed to be at least a decade away.

With traffic woes not going away any time soon, one of the recommendations Sutton made in his email to Santa Rosa's governing board called for them to work with Escambia County leadership to direct air show traffic to existing higher volume roads and away from SR 399.

Tom Lloyd, Santa Rosa County's public safety director, did not directly address what traffic calming mechanisms might be employed when the Blue Angels conduct their air show on July 8, but he did say Santa Rosa County does have a seat at the table of the incident management team put together ahead of the show by Escambia County.

"We know there are traffic issues when the Blue Angels are in town. We are prepared to handle it," he said.

He said the Santa Rosa County Sheriff's Office has a traffic plan in place that will include staging deputies at the U.S. 98 entrance to the bridge and the intersection of the bridge and Gulf Boulevard. First responders will also be deployed to do strategic locations to assist quickly in emergencies.

"We're able to handle any emergencies," Lloyd said. "We're ready for it this year."

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Sutton also recommended that the county establish emergency response sites "with water (if not gasoline)" and talk to Escambia County about paying for and setting up portable toilets in Navarre Beach public access areas and at parking lots within the boundaries of the National Seashore park that stretches along the coast between Navarre Beach and Pensacola Beach.

Asked about the more extreme requests made by the leaseholders association, Lloyd responded "to my knowledge the situation was not nearly as dire" as Sutton had depicted in his correspondence to the county.

No one likes to sit in traffic, he said, but with an event as popular as the Blue Angels Air Show it's probably inevitable.

"We do urge personal responsibility, and ask people to carry water if they need to," he said. "It's important to stay hydrated and make sure you have plenty of gas."

Lloyd said he had not personally heard of any incidents of people running out of gas or of people relieving themselves outside following last year's air show.

"There probably were people using the restroom outside. We were not made aware of that," he said.

This article originally appeared on Pensacola News Journal: Navarre Beach record traffic over Blue Angels air show jams bridge