Roosevelt crosswalk solution? Maybe

BY PRU SOWERS

KONK LIFE STAFF WRITER

There has been a solution to the dangerous crosswalk issue on North Roosevelt Boulevard….. sort of.

A second meeting between Key West City officials and state District Six Transportation Secretary James Wolfe on Oct. 12 was successful in convincing Wolfe to “accelerate” the project, according to City Manager Jim Scholl. Scholl, Key West Police Chief Donie Lee and city Engineering Director Jim Bouquet met with Wolfe and his team, taking them out to North Roosevelt Blvd. to watch the often-dangerous interaction between cars and pedestrians trying to cross the busy thoroughfare.

“The more the secretary stood at that crosswalk, the more realization came to him that he needed to accelerate this project and this process. I think he came away with that strong opinion,” Bouquet said.

“We certainly had their assurance that they understood the concerns here and they are looking to accelerate this,” Scholl said. “What the secretary said was if at all possible, they would accelerate the construction as early as they can in the funded fiscal year starting in July.”

The Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT) has included $275,000 in its fiscal 2018 budget, which began July 1 this year, to pay for a pedestrian signal system called “HAWK,” a High-intensity Activated Cross Walk signal at all six of the new pedestrian crosswalks along North Roosevelt Blvd. HAWK uses a series of traffic lights – yellow to prepare drivers to stop and red to stop – once a pedestrian has pushed a button at the crosswalk, activating the lights. FDOT also included $1.5 million in its 2019 fiscal budget, which begins July 1, 2018, to pay for the system installation.

Technically, the design work could begin immediately, since state funding became available July 1. But Commissioner Sam Kaufman was skeptical as he proposed taking $300,000 from the city street paving budget in order to start the design phase now. The state would later reimburse those costs to the city.

“I don’t know what else to do besides put some pressure on them [FDOT] and say we’ll do it ourselves,” Kaufman said at the commission’s Oct. 17 meeting.

But his resolution was voted down 3-2 (Commissioners Jimmy Wardlow and Clayton Lopez were absent) after Scholl said he didn’t believe the city could finish the design of the HAWK system any quicker than the state, now that Wolfe has given assurances he will move the HAWKS up on the project priority list. Even if the city hired its own design company, the plans would still have to be approved by state engineers, a requirement that could make the design process take as long as eight months to complete.

“I don’t think there’s anything we’re going to do to speed up the process,” Scholl told Kaufman.

That did not satisfy the commissioner, although he agreed to remove the $300,000 city funding commitment from his resolution. He pointed to an email from FDOT that said the installation portion of the project would go out to bid in May 2019. That is too long, he said, and changed the wording in his resolution to urge FDOT to both design and install the HAWK system during the state’s 2018 fiscal year, which ends June 30 of next year.

“That is still not acceptable,” Kaufman said at the commission meeting about FDOT’s proposed schedule. “How many police reports are we going to have?” Two pedestrians were killed in North Roosevelt Blvd. crosswalks this year.

“That’s impossible,” said Mayor Cates, referring to Kaufman’s timeline. He asked Kaufman to withdraw his resolution but Kaufman refused. The resolution then failed by the 3-2 vote.

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