Siesta Key traffic is an accident waiting to happen

It was the height of spring break and traffic on Siesta Key’s Higel Avenue, the prime route from the mainland to the beach, was nonstop. And not just vehicle traffic: A steady stream of both seasoned and newbie cyclists, walkers schlepping beach paraphernalia on their backs and Amish on three-wheeled “tricycles” pulling infants in unprotected wagons streamed south on the sidewalk and bike lane that run down one side of the thoroughfare.

That is until they encountered, in the 4000 block, as many as a dozen vehicles whose owners were working construction on two adjacent luxury homes across the street, parked so as to entirely block not only the pedestrian and cycling lanes, but a bus stop as well. The travelers had no choice but to enter the traffic lane and maneuver around the vehicles in order to continue on their way.

Janice and Mark Harper, who live outside Toronto but have been visiting Sarasota seasonally for decades, have traversed that route at least twice a week on bike or on foot for more than 40 years, traveling from the Southgate home near the corner of Osprey Avenue and Siesta Drive that has been in Mark’s family since 1966. They first noticed the blockage back in January, assuming it was a temporary aberration – after all, the area is posted with signs that read: “No parking or obstructing right of way.”

But as days passed, the number of people continued to rise and the trucks remained. They felt they were observing an accident just waiting to happen.

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“These trucks are blocking both the pedestrian sidewalk and the cycle route and forcing people into fast-moving traffic,” Janice Harper said. “Most of Sarasota is incredibly dangerous for cyclists – at least on Siesta they’ve made an attempt to make it safer by painting a bike path. But if it’s then covered by trucks, it’s a moot point.”

The danger wasn’t a hypothetical to the Harpers. In 2018, Janice’s brother-in-law was thrown 20 feet in the air and over a fence after being struck while cycling on Siesta Key’s Midnight Pass, by a young man cited for “careless driving.” He has never been able to work again due to a traumatic brain injury.

But what put Mark Harper “over the edge” was watching a near-miss as a mother pushed her baby in a stroller into the traffic – after all, his visiting daughter had pushed their granddaughter in a stroller down the same route just weeks before. That’s when Janice decided to call the appropriate authorities to get the vehicles cited and removed.

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Only it wasn’t quite that easy.

Janice initially called the transportation department at the city of Sarasota, where she was put on hold for 25 minutes before being told that Sarasota County was the responsible entity, and she should call the non-emergency line for the sheriff’s office. That prompted a runaround from one department to another – development services, building and planning, permitting, code enforcement – with no one seemingly able to address her concern.

Eventually Janice gave up and called 911. They said the situation didn’t qualify as an emergency but, “We’ll get a car out if we can.”

Meanwhile, Janice went to the building site herself and spoke to the construction supervisor for one of the homes, who insisted none of the offending vehicles belonged to his suppliers.

After several more futile calls, Janice was hopeful after finally finding a sympathetic ear at the county, a woman who said she would follow up personally. But as the Harpers prepare to return to their northern home at the end of March, a half-dozen offending vehicles remained. In desperation, she called the only number she could find in the newspaper – mine.

It took multiple emails for me to confirm that the Sarasota County Sheriff’s Office was indeed the entity responsible for parking violations in that area. (The city has responsibility for Siesta Drive to where it turns south and becomes Higel Avenue – a spot dubbed “Dead Man’s Curve” after 10 traffic fatalities in the five years from 2012 to 2017.)

It took several more inquiries to get the following message from a staff member in the Planning and Development Services department: “From what I understand, these are temporary parking occurrences . . . If there is what appears to obstructions in the roadway, that can be reported to the Sheriff’s Office.”

I responded that I didn’t consider all day “temporary,” that the area was posted “No Parking” and that it someone had already attempted to report it to the Sheriff’s Office multiple times. At this point, I was also handed off to a different public information officer, who determined there was no ordinance in the Unified Development Code or the Building Code to forbid the obstruction – though the Public Works Department did cite a state statute that says parking "in a bicycle lane or on a sidewalk is illegal.”

Despite both the Harpers and I supplying the address where the violation was occurring, by Easter weekend a lesser number of vehicles still remained, apparently uncited. Since construction of the homes now was nearing an end, Janice reluctantly concluded nothing would come of her complaints – and nothing would be done to prevent a similar hazard in the future.

“This is such a foreseeable calamity,” she said. “Literally dozens of enforcement vehicles take that road every day. The bottom line is the disregard of parking laws and why they are not being enforced on a regular basis.”

Harper said she felt pretty certain the county would respond with a lot more urgency if a pedestrian or cyclist was hit. All she was trying to do was make sure that never happened.

“I get really angry that the desire of a very few people building huge houses takes precedence over the safety of a multitude of people who use that path daily,” she said. “It’s Higel now. But the broader issue is the supremacy of vehicles here over the rights of pedestrians and cyclists to have free and safe movement.”

Contact Carrie Seidman at carrie.seidman@gmail.com or 505-238-0392.

This article originally appeared on Sarasota Herald-Tribune: Siesta Key parking puts pedestrians' lives at risk