MANATEE COUNTY – The Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT) is conducting an extensive study of the Cortez Road corridor from the east end of the Cortez Bridge in Cortez to the tip of U.S. Highway 41 in the West Somerset area.
During the Aug. 1 Council of Governments meeting at the Bradenton Area Convention Center in Palmetto, FDOT Community Planner and Strategic Intermodal System Coordinator Vitor Suguri and Renaissance Planning Managing Principal Frank Kalpakis provided county and city officials with an overview of the study and what it hopes to accomplish.
Suguri said the study, in addition to transportation elements, also addresses land use and future development along the corridor and will look at the relationships between transportation and land use. He said land use has a great impact on transportation and vice versa and the goal is to integrate both approaches in the study.
The study’s first phase includes meeting with and gathering insight from city leaders, residents, impacted stakeholders and property owners, developers and others. Public input meetings will be scheduled, but none have been scheduled yet pertaining to the western portion of Cortez Road that leads to Cortez and Bradenton Beach.
Suguri noted the lengthy Cortez Road corridor passes through multiple areas and neighborhoods that are different from one another and have different needs. He said three of the top 10 most dangerous segments of FDOT’s District 1 roadways in terms of fatal and serious injury crashes are located along the Cortez Road corridor, including the fourth most dangerous portion of the corridor between East 80th Street West (just west of 75th Street) to 30th Street West, near the Bowlero bowling alley. The next portion, from 30th Street West to 44th Avenue is listed as the sixth most dangerous stretch of road in District 1, which Suguri said includes 570 corridors.
According to the presentation, nine crash fatalities and 63 serious severe injuries have occurred along the corridor since 2015.
“It’s very important for us at the department to focus on safety, making sure whatever improvements we’re doing are not just about speeding up traffic. We want to make sure traffic is flowing safely. We want to make sure pedestrians can walk safely to where they’re going,” Suguri said, noting bicyclist safety is another key component.
“We know that just designing a safe roadway is not going to answer all the problems. There are multiple things involved with safety, so we want to take a system-wide approach. It takes all of us to bring it together. It’s policymaking, it’s how we interact with our community, it’s law enforcement and emergency management. It’s everybody working together to bring a good solution and that’s why we want to involve as many people as possible in this plan, so we can come up with good solutions,” Suguri said.
“It’s a commuter corridor. It provides access to the beaches. It serves multiple functions. It’s important to understand that in terms of developing a vision to respond to and facilitate the type of function that it serves,” Kalpakis said. “We’re looking at traffic conditions today and how conditions will be in the future as the corridor grows and as more people move into the area. Looking at safety conditions and the safety record in the corridor, which is not really good. That’s really the intent; to make sure the transportation strategies that we’re developing will make safe conditions for everyone.”
Regarding the anticipated study timeline, Suguri said, “We have about six months to complete this stage of the project. We’re already conducting interviews. We met with some of the commissioners and we’re scheduling more of those meetings. We have an extensive stakeholder list. We’re going to be engaging with them one-on-one, not only on how the roadway functions, but also on their plans for future development along the corridor.
“We’re also in the process of collecting data. We want to produce an existing conditions report that shows what the corridor is like today, what are the hot spots and where do we need to focus. We’re going to combine that with the information we get from the public to formulate those strategies. By fall and late winter we should have a vision plan and some high-level strategies we can offer,” Suguri said.
Suguri said the next steps include finalizing the transportation and land use existing conditions report, conducting more stakeholder interviews and preparing a community story video.
“It’s best to hear from the community so we can share with the public, so it’s not DOT leading the way, it’s really the community taking leadership,” he said.
Suguri said a visioning workshop is anticipated in October that will give the public a chance to talk to FDOT officials and highlight what they feel are problem areas and hot spots. Suguri said a project website will also be created.
Bradenton Beach Mayor John Chappie expressed support for the study.
“I see this as a great opportunity, especially for the west side to be involved. FDOT is footing the bill on this so let’s get involved. We have traffic issues trying to get to and from the Island and there’s all the development that’s going to be taking place on the west side in the next few years.”
Along the west end of Cortez Road, 86 new homes are currently being built as part of the Hunters Point development, approximately 2,000 residential units are approved for the nearby and pending Peninsula Bay development and 6,500 residential units are approved for the pending Lake Flores development along Cortez Road and the El Conquistador Parkway.
