Adding buffered 7-foot bicycle lanes along U.S. 1 from Rio Mar Drive to Port St. Lucie Boulevard emerged as a controversial aspect of the $6.3 million repaving project set to get underway next summer.
Travel lanes will be scaled back to 11 feet in width from 12 feet to make room for the wider bike lanes, Florida Department of Transportation plans show.
Sidewalks and street lights will also be upgraded during the resurfacing of the congested 5-mile-long stretch of U.S. 1 in southeastern Port St. Lucie, FDOT records show.
The project is to start in summer 2020 and be completed by fall 2021. It includes the intersection of U.S. 1 and the new $90 million Crosstown Parkway, which is due to open this fall.
A buffered bicycle lane is similar to a regular bicycle lane, but provides additional space with a double-6-inch white edge line to further separate the bike lane from the motor vehicle travel lane, FDOT spokeswoman Barbara Kelleher said. The existing bicycle lanes are 4 feet wide.
Several city residents who attended an FDOT public information session on March 26 at the Civic Center questioned the need for the wider bicycle lanes because so few bicyclists venture onto U.S. 1.
“This kind of scares me, the 7-foot bicycle lanes,” said Sandy Mitchell, who has owned a home in the city with her husband Duane since 2011. “Narrowing the (travel) lanes, I don’t think that’s a very good idea at all. It won’t make it safer if they make the lanes narrower.”
Some drivers need the extra room in the travel lanes to make up for dimming eyesight and slower reactions, Mitchell said. And few people bicycle along U.S. 1, so the bike lanes aren’t really needed.
“If they had said they were going to make another lan-e of traffic on Highway 1, that would be wiser than making it narrow for bike lanes,” Mitchell said. “I would worry about biking there.”
Duane Mitchell added, “Traffic is so heavy, I can’t see bicycling out here in it.”
Mohammad Razin, who owns the 7-Eleven franchise on U.S. 1 and Village Green Drive, also questioned the wisdom of narrowing the travel lanes and widening the bicycle lanes.
“In Port St. Lucie, how many people ride a bike?” Razin asked. “If you go look at this bike lane all day, you’re not going to even see 10 people.”
A bigger issue is how the construction of the Crosstown Parkway intersection on U.S. 1 has hurt the businesses in the vicinity, Razin said. The U.S. 1 resurfacing project will only prolong their financial suffering.
But Terri Loughlin and her daughter, Natalie Wells, said they are looking forward to the addition of the buffered bicycle lanes because they bike to the Civic Center almost every day.
“I think it’s great,” Terri Loughlin said about the wider bicycle lanes. “We’ll be using our bikes more. She’s got a bike and I’ve got a trike.”
“We like to use the sidewalks,” Loughlin said. “Frankly, I’m afraid of the bike lanes so we use the sidewalks. We’ve seen a lot of people in near misses of people on bikes.”
The 7-foot bicycle lanes are part of FDOT’s “‘Complete Streets’ approach which considers the mobility, convenience, accessibility and safety of all road users, and places an emphasis on the most vulnerable transportation system users such pedestrians and bicyclists,” Kelleher said.
Port St. Lucie Mayor Greg Oravec described the beefed-up bike lanes as a “fun” aspect of the repaving project. The lanes will be painted green to motorists can see them better, Oravec said.
FDOT’s resurfacing project on U.S. 1 will be wrapping up as the city starts a $1.5 million landscaping beautification project on the commercial mainline, Oravec said.
It has been about 20 years since U.S. 1 in southeastern Port St. Lucie was last repaved, said Tyler Wallum, a project manager with Volkert Inc., a transportation engineering firm working for FDOT.