MILTON — It’s a situation most parents face, but when Rob Williamson’s kids asked him repeatedly why they had to wait in traffic to leave Navarre Beach, he decided to do something about it.
Williamson reached out to a local engineering firm to find out if it would be possible to improve traffic flow leaving the Navarre Beach Bridge with the land available. On Monday, Williamson presented his recommendation to the Santa Rosa County Commission that it consider adding a second-left turn lane leaving the Navarre Beach Bridge to westbound U.S. Highway 98.
“Not withstanding Memorial Day weekend, July 4th, Labor Day, those big events, just on any given Saturday after 2 o’clock it starts to become an issue and traffic gets backed up,” said Williamson, who lives in Navarre. “This issue isn’t going away anytime soon.”
The county, with approval from the Florida Department of Transportation, adjusted the traffic light pattern at the intersection a couple of weeks before Memorial Day to make it easier for people to leave Navarre Beach.
“It just makes for a safer intersection and allows more cares to go through,” Roger Blaylock, the county’s engineer, said after the meeting. “But still, during peak summertime that’s still not enough time to clear the causeway and keep backups from occurring. They back up all the way through Gulf Boulevard and beyond.”
Blaylock said the county has contracted with Volkert & Associates to conduct a traffic study at the intersection. The results, which are expected in the next two weeks, will be used to further update the signal patterns for weekdays and weekends to try to improve traffic flow.
With an additional left-turn lane from the bridge, Williamson said conservative estimates show there would be room for 12 to 15 more vehicles to be in line to leave the bridge. He added that the number of vehicles able to leave the bridge has been estimated to increase by 75 percent.
Williamson estimated that adding a second dedicated turn lane would cost $620,000.
Commission Jim Melvin said the idea is not new.
“This is something that we’ve been looking at for the full time that I’ve been in this chair. One of the problems that we have is that we don’t have free reinto do these things,” Melvin said. “You have to coordinate everything through FDOT, and FDOT’s focus is on east-west traffic. While your points are well-made and well taken, we’ll take a hard look at this, but the sticking point has been FDOT.”
Blaylock said he and his staff likely would start work on a feasibility study to add a dedicated turn lane and would schedule survey crews to gather more detailed information.
“It’s on our to-do list,” he said.
Contact Daily News Business Editor Dusty Ricketts at 850-315-4448 or dricketts@nwfdailynews.com. Follow him on Twitter @DustyRnwfdn.
