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Florida DOT Looks To Trim Lanes To Increase Pedestrian, Cyclist Safety

Alton Road in Miami Beach is one of the thoroughfares facing changes through FDOT's complete streets program.
Patrick Ferrell
/
The Florida Channel
Leon County Judge John Cooper on June 30, 2022, in a screen grab from The Florida Channel.

Three years ago a blistering assessment by a national advocacy group prompted the Florida Department of Transportation to get serious about making the state’s roadways safer for pedestrians and cyclists. After four Florida metropolitan areas were ranked as the most dangerous for pedestrians, FDOT leaders began to consider making design changes such as building narrower lanes.

Proponents of narrower lanes argue that wide, open lanes encourage motorists to hit the gas and endanger pedestrians, while narrow lanes force motorists to slow down.

So when  Smart Growth America s 2011 Dangerous by Design report named Orlando the most dangerous and Miami came in fourth, state officials knew they had to do something. 

Alton Road in Miami Beach is one of the thoroughfares facing changes through FDOT's complete streets program.
Credit Patrick Ferrell / Miami Herald
/
The Florida Channel
Alton Road in Miami Beach is one of the thoroughfares facing changes through FDOT's complete streets program.

FDOT SecretaryAnathPrasad lured District Secretary BillyHattawayback to the agency from the private sector after that report was released.

“He does not want our state on that list,” saysHattaway, who’s charged with leading the agency’s statewide initiative to improve pedestrian and cyclist safety.

Now the agency is starting to make some changes to the way suburban streets and busy downtown corridors are designed.

Vocal Critic

A prominent city planner based in Washington, D.C., recently tookFDOTto task for its current high-volume street design model. In an article in The Atlantic City Lab, Jeff Speck describesFDOTas “the agency that may preside over the greatest pedestrian massacre in U.S. history.” And Speck argues this is by design since “in no other state has the DOT had such a powerful influence on the design of urban streets.”

He stresses that he wantsFDOTto think narrower when it comes to high-volume street design because, he says, wider lanes lead to more pedestrian fatalities.

For Speck it's pretty simple: We determine how fast to drive based on our environment. 

"I believe the principal reason why there's such a high death rate among pedestrians in Florida is because so many of our downtown streets have been designed to highway standards,” says Speck. “Most of the major cities in Florida have state highways... running through theirdowntowns."

But that’s somethingFDOThopes to change.

Narrower Lanes

In September,FDOTadopted a complete-streets policy that acknowledges the role of context in road design.

“We do have to change the way we do design,” saysHattaway. “We have had what I would describe a one-size-fits-all approach to designing streets and highways.”

Under the new policy, downtown city streets will no longer be designed like highways.

The standard lane width is 12 feet, butFDOTis currently looking at high-capacity urban roads throughout the state to determine where 11 or 10 feet lanes might be appropriate.

Hattaway says the 12-foot standard would generally remain for rural roads and those with speed limits of 45 miles-per-hour or more, but suburban streets could see an 11-foot standard and downtown thoroughfares could drop down to 10 with a few exceptions.

The blue bar represents the width of a Toyota Camry, a popular sedan, compared against the standard 12-foot lane and proposed narrower lanes.
Credit Marva Hinton / WLRN
/
The Florida Channel
The blue bar represents the width of a Toyota Camry, a popular sedan, compared against the standard 12-foot lane and proposed narrower lanes.

But for this to work,Hattawaysays, local governments need to consider urban design changes as well.

He blames land development patterns “where all of the developments were being‘cul-de-saced’onto the state road system” and says if “one neighborhood would have to connect to the next, which would have to connect to the next neighborhood, there wouldn't be so much pressure to widen our roads."

FDOT’s plan also calls for what are known as road diets where say a six-lane road will become a four-lane road, and the agency is increasingly installing roundabouts.

Moving Forward

When Smart Growth America released its 2014 Dangerous by Design report, four Florida metropolitan areas still topped the list as the most dangerous for pedestrians. Miami remained fourth on the list, and Orlando still came out on top.

Hattaway acknowledges that it will take time for the new safety measures to have a measurable impact, but he saysFDOTis committed to the effort.

“We’ll be the third largest state soon,” saysHattaway. “We’re expecting 100 million tourists this coming year. We want people to perceive our state to be a safe place for pedestrians and cyclists.”

Copyright 2020 WLRN 91.3 FM. To see more, visit WLRN 91.3 FM.

Marva Hinton is originally from North Carolina. She works as a reporter and fill-in anchor for WLRN. Before coming to WLRN, she spent several years working as a radio news reporter and anchor in Orlando. During her stint there she covered everything from shuttle launches to the foreclosure crisis and the Casey Anthony trial. Prior to that, Marva worked in radio news in Raleigh, North Carolina and Radford, Virginia. She began her career as a radio news producer in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Marva has an MFA in creative writing from Antioch University Los Angeles. She also holds a BA in journalism from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill where she completed a double major in political science. In her spare time, she enjoys playing the pan flute and teaching her cats to do tricks. Marva is married and lives in Miami.