Roundabouts may be constructed on Southwestern Port St. Lucie Boulevard at three busy intersections as part of the $37 million widening project.
The roundabouts would be built at Port St. Lucie Boulevard’s intersections with Tulip Boulevard south of Darwin Square, Alcantarra Boulevard and McCall Road.
Plans call for PSL Boulevard to be reconstructed between Gatlin Boulevard and Darwin Square and widened to four lanes from Darwin to Becker Road. Work is to start next fall and be completed in 2029.
The Florida Department of Transportation plans to install traffic signals on PSL Boulevard at Tulip, Alcantarra and McCall, but Vice Mayor Shannon Martin questioned that decision during the City Council’s March 25 meeting.
As a result, the City Council directed City Manager Russ Blackburn to ask FDOT and project consultant American Engineering & Development Corp., to consider changing the road design to include the roundabouts.
Martin said she was shocked to hear a former high-ranking public works official had purportedly told FDOT and American Engineering officials the city didn’t want roundabouts in the project.
There are already several traffic lights between the intersection of PSL and Gatlin boulevards and Tunis Street, Martin said. Adding more traffic lights south of Darwin Square, instead of roundabouts, would stifle the flow of vehicles.
“I have concerns about that design,” Martin said. “I immediately thought about what a nightmare that would be. I feel it’s a mistake to do it this way.”
“We know roundabouts, even though people don’t like them, they move traffic,” Martin said. “We really need to look at this. We can’t delay it.”
It was at FDOT’s public information workshop on the project on March 12 that Martin said she first learned roundabouts were purposely excluded.
Mayor Greg Oravec and Councilmembers John Carvelli and Stephanie Morgan agreed with Martin’s observations about the roundabouts.
“I had the same exact feeling,” Oravec said. “How can we look to the current design, not stop the progress that is happening, but to bring forward some options that are negotiated with FDOT and American.”
Councilwoman Stephanie Morgan said the traffic congestion on PSL Boulevard reminds her of that on St. Lucie West Boulevard “where you have a traffic light every 100 feet, it seems like. It’s going to be nothing but jamming it up.”
Blackburn said FDOT traffic studies showed the traffic signals are warranted, but questioned whether they were mandatory.
“Are there other things that could be done to continue the project but not end up with a stop light every 300 feet, which is going to really impede transportation?” Blackburn asked rhetorically.
Oravec and Martin said they also wished the council had reviewed the design of a roundabout planned for PSL Boulevard’s intersection with Gatlin and Tulip boulevards north of Darwin Square. (Tulip is a U-shaped road with two intersections on Port St. Lucie Boulevard.)
“We’re finally getting to improve the corridor and we laid an egg,” Oravec said about the Gatlin/Tulip intersection. “It’s not to our roundabout standards.”
The roundabout lacks a sculpture or other work of art in the center so vehicles can drive through the middle, Oravec said.
“If that would have come to the council for a policy decision,” Oravec said, “I would have said, ‘I’d be willing to invest in purchasing those two single-family homes (at the intersection) and let’s build a roundabout – let’s build a gateway into this community.’”
City and state transportation officials should figure out a roadway design to move traffic more rapidly on Southwestern Port St. Lucie Boulevard, without delaying the project, Oravec and Martin said.
“It is the last project that I would want to get held up,” Martin said. “We so desperately need that road to be done yesterday, the whole road.”
