Emily Schemper, Senior Director of Planning and Environmental Resources for Monroe County, joined Good Morning Keys on KeysTalk 96.9/102.5FM this morning to talk about issues facing the county.
Could US 1 be widened?
Schemper said, “We have several items tomorrow for the Board of County Commissioners meeting in Key Largo starting at 9 am. We do have three transportation related items. Those actually have a time approximate of 1:30. They are the regularly scheduled every two year traffic study to measure level of service on US 1. There is also a report regarding a study on gas stations and their impacts on traffic and congestion. Then there is a public hearing that is the first of two hearings for an ordinance, regarding removing a provision in our comprehensive plan that currently does not allow adding additional lanes to US 1, so removal of that policy would allow FDOT to do the study and analysis and potentially act as to whether or not additional lanes are warranted in certain areas, and then potentially add those additional lanes that would apply to the unincorporated portions of Monroe County only. It would not affect any rules that are in place in Islamorada, Marathon, Layton, etc.”
So it’s only on the local level at the moment?
Schemper confirmed, “Yes, the county’s comprehensive plan has that prohibition in it. There is something in Florida statute that requires FDOT to consider our comp plan, and honor that prohibition. So the commission has been talking about this for several months. They asked staff to process an amendment to remove that prohibition. They had staff go and talk to FDOT about the possibility of studying whether adding one or more additional lanes in certain areas would help with traffic congestion and or hurricane evacuation. FDOT told us that they would not even do the study unless there was a possibility to actually do the road improvement project afterwards, if the study showed that it was warranted. So with this prohibition in place in the comp plan, FDOT won’t even do the study, the origination of the conversation at the board was about bridges. For the most part, a couple of bridges were slated for replacement in the next five to 10 years, maybe more, it’s hard to say sometimes, but the direction from the board expanded a bit to include all of US 1 and that was also based on a conversation with FDOT, where they said, if you just make the bridges larger, than you’re going to create a bottleneck going back down to a two lane roadway. So that’s what staff has been proceeding with. There has been a lot of public input coming in, so I do anticipate some speakers tomorrow and encourage anyone who has opinions on that to speak out. One note on the bridge replacement state, FDOT has told us now over the summer that I believe it’s Long Key Bridge and Seven Mile Bridge, they are not necessarily planning to replace those fully anymore. They are planning to do repairs instead. So that changes that analysis a bit as well. So I anticipate some of that will come to the planning and environmental resources department, maybe not all of it. I do know the County Administrator has been meeting with Key West regularly about those issues, so the conversations have not stopped. Richard Clark, who was our director for transit, he is here until the end of the month, so he has still been very involved, and is still committed to helping the county deal with those issues as much as he can. But yes, there are some changes coming through. I think it will probably be a split duty, shift of responsibilities.”
The report on the study to measure the level of service on US 1 will also be heard tomorrow.
Schemper said, “We do have, I’m not going to call them great results, because yes, we’re always kind of hovering near our threshold level of service on US 1, but the report does show that all segments of the roadway within unincorporated Monroe County and the overall highway itself, they are all meeting the adopted level of service standard. So I understand that doesn’t mean anecdotally, you don’t have to wait to get out onto US 1. I have the same frustrations from time to time, but the actual adopted level of service it does show that it’s meeting that within the unincorporated county, at least still a few problem segments, but those are a bit out of our control because they’re within the incorporated areas.”
Are there still any discussions about possibly replacing the Seven Mile Bridge?
Schemper said, “It’s a separate discussion from the road widening. However, if, for example, one’s opinion is that the bridges should be turned into four lanes, it could affect the urgency of a change needed for allowing more than one lane. FDOT did also tell us once that rather than replace a bridge with a four lane bridge, what they would probably do is build two side by side, two lane bridges, one for each direction. So that’s also an interesting factor, but it also shows how complicated it is to have the discussion and make decisions about it, because there are so many factors that need to be studied and we don’t even have the analysis of which specific areas it would help with flow, what problems would that then create elsewhere, in terms of bottlenecks. So it’s a very complex situation.”
Restrictions on downstairs enclosures will be discussed tomorrow and we could be getting some relief.
Schemper said, “The restriction on the square footage of below flood enclosures in the unincorporated county, which has been in place since, I believe, about 2002, it’s been quite a while, one of two necessary ordinances is up for adoption tomorrow to remove that square footage limit. So those below flood areas would still be only allowed for use as limited storage, parking, building access, but people could enclose a larger area for their storage. But like I said, it’s one of two ordinances. The second ordinance takes it out of a different portion of our code. It’s repeated twice in our code. That ordinance will come back in October, and then it does take a little while for these adopted ordinances to become effective. They have to go to the state for review and have a challenge period. So we’re looking at maybe end of January, beginning of February, when we could start issuing permits for larger enclosures downstairs.”
Even gas stations are being looked at.
Schemper said, “We do not have any big proposals that I know of at the moment. There was a proposal in Key Largo for a gas station, and based on that, a community member requested that the county do a study on gas stations, and if they have an inordinate effect on congestion, traffic safety, etc. So our traffic consultant did that. Their report is one of those three items that are set for 1:30. The consultant will present their report. The main summary is that the way we currently review traffic does seem adequate for gas stations as well. There’s no separate analysis needed other than if it has a certain number of pumps, we should probably be doing additional analysis on whether or not, for example, a turn lane, a separate turn lane, like deceleration turn lane into and out of the gas station is warranted. So one of the recommendations would be to update our traffic study guidelines when a developer’s proposing one of these that they have to add additional information about whether or not a turn lane would be required.”
Could a Buc-ees be coming?
Schemper said, “I would assume not. However, I would have to say, most conversations I’ve had about this item in the last week, Buc-ees has come up. So who knows? Not as a proposal, just like it is here, where everyone’s thinking, gas stations, gas stations. Oh, Buc-ees, but we thought maybe it would be like mini Buc-ees or a baby Buc-ees for the Keys. I don’t know.”