- November 16, 2024
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Florida Park Drive residents have complained to the City Council for years about traffic on their residential street.
But a city of Palm Coast traffic engineering study presented at a City Council workshop the morning of June 9 by city engineer Sean Costello says that, at least in terms of engineering, there’s nothing wrong: The road itself can handle the amount of traffic it receives, which comes to between 5,100 and 8,200 vehicles per day depending on location, according to the study.
And they’re not going inordinately fast: Average speeds are 30-35 mph; the speed limit is 30 mph. The street does not have an unacceptable level of service rating or a particularly high number of crashes.
“You’ve got two elements on the traffic,” City Manager Jim Landon told City Council members at the workshop. “One of them is the technical engineering side, and your traffic engineers are basically saying that there is not a problem with this street. … Then you’ve got the other side, which is the human side,” the residents who are upset.
That disconnect between the two has left the City Council undecided on what to do next.
It could do nothing. Or it could spend about $40,000 for a study by the Daytona Beach-based Lassiter Transportation Group, a matter that will be discussed again at a 9 a.m. City Council meeting Tuesday, June 16, at the Palm Coast Community Center — where members of the public will have a chance to comment — before the city takes any action.
But even commissioning further study may not help the city find a workable solution. The city could attempt to move some traffic off Florida Park Drive, but it would then go onto other area streets, likely angering residents who live there.
“The question is, if you decide that it’s unacceptable, for whatever reason ... the question’s then, what do you do about it?” Mayor Jon Netts said. “And my problem has always been, you don’t rob Peter to pay Paul. You don’t take the traffic on Florida Park Drive and put it on Fleetwood.”
Landon said: “If you’re not willing to make any changes out there, then you’re wasting $40,000. If you are willing to make changes ... then the modeling gives you some additional data.”
Councilman Bill McGuire said it seems there’s an issue, but it may be one where more information doesn’t lead to a solution.
“I think we can assume there’s an issue because we’re having citizen complaints,” he said. “But quite frankly, I don’t have the slightest idea of how I can fix this. … I don’t have any issue with collecting data, but if the data doesn’t lead you to a solution, then you’ve just got a whole bunch of data, and that’s my dilemma.”
Netts suggested the possibility of gathering information solely on the number of vehicles using Florida Park Drive as a cut-through. If much of the street’s traffic comes from drivers who don’t live in the area but use the street to get to other places, he said, a solution may be feasible if the traffic could be diverted to several neighboring streets without overloading any single one.
How to handle irate residents?
In other business at the Tuesday meeting, Landon said the city of Palm Coast will create a team to help staff members learn how to deal with harassment from disruptive citizens, such as a man who had to be calmed by Sheriff’s Office deputies after he showed up at city offices May 27 enraged over a water bill.
In that case, the man, B-section resident Lorenzo Fields, had for months made repeated phone calls to city staff, swearing at them and making vulgar, sexually-laced comments.
McGuire suggested staff receive more training on how to handle such situations, and he raised the matter in his comments at the end of a June 9 City Council workshop.
Since he’d mentioned the idea during a County Commission meeting June 1, he said, he’d received plenty of feedback from residents.
“Quite frankly, most of it is negative,” he said at the workshop. “They feel that the city is trying to trample on the Amendment 1 rights of the citizens for free speech, and if you work for government you should just have to take it. … And also, some of it says, ‘Well, if we’re going to look at this, we should also look at what’s happening on the city’s side of the fence.’”
In private industry, McGuire said, he’d had an advantage government workers don’t: “You didn’t have to deal with people like that, you simply showed them the door,” he said.
As to harassment from residents, Landon said, “It is going to happen.” The training will focus on “how do you deal with it, keep it at a higher level, and don’t escalate it.”
