Bike safety advocates in Lee County have launched a last-minute effort to persuade FDOT to change its plans for bike lanes when SR 82 is rebuilt. They want new bike paths to be separated from the planned 6-lane highway
Rebuilding an unsafe stretch of State Road 82 through eastern Lee County will begin soon, but a call is being made to change the plans to take bicycle lanes off the roadway and place them in a separate, safer bike path along the route.
The design for making SR 82 a divided highway, rather than a two-lane, accident-prone stretch, include a bike path plan that has become popular among road designers — bike lanes included along with an adjoining buffer lane as part of the road.
But Al O’Donnell, a member of the Lee County Metropolitan Planning Organization’s citizens panel, is leading the charge to urge Florida Department of Transportation to change its approach.
“I think our standard layout stinks,” said O’Donnell at a recent Citizens Advisory Committee meeting.
Several other members joined the call at a recent meeting, citing the danger of putting bicycles on the same roadways with trucks and cars traveling beyond the posted 55 mph speed limit.
SR 82 is a road on which more than two dozen people have been killed in some 200 accidents over five years, including both motorists and pedestrians.
Safety is a major factor in turning the two-lane undivided road on which traffic routinely travels in excess of 60 miles per hour, into a six-lane highway with medians as far east as Alabama Road in Lehigh Acres. From that point to the Hendry line, the plan calls for a four-lane highway, with a median with room to eventually add another lane in each direction.
The advisory committee approved a resolution at its most recent meeting calling for planners to ask that the SR 82 bike lanes be reconfigured. There were a handful of votes against the resolution, nearly all from members who have worked professionally in highway planning and engineering. Three members who voted against changing the design argued that what may seem to be a tweak still requires a lot of design work that could bring delays and higher costs.
O’Donnell agrees that tearing up the design would be a challenge, especially because FDOT has acquired the land based on current design trends, but argued against including elements that are dangerous.
“I don’t want those stupid bike lanes on the side of the road,” he said. “The hard part is, you have already committed the right of way, you can’t go back 10 years and fix it, (but) you can chop up the cucumber a lot better than we have.”
State highway engineers will take another look, but there appears to be little enthusiasm for re-doing years of work. Zachary Burch of the Florida Department of Transportation said it’s more than simply paving a different route for bikes.
“It’s kind of late in the game, obviously we’re going to start construction in this fiscal year,” Burch said. “The roadways are designed with drainage in mind, with underground utilities, if we were going to move (the bike lanes), those would have to be looked at (again).”
Because SR 82 has proven a dangerous road for traffic, FDOT agreed to put the construction on a fast track.
Advisory group members who support a return to the drawing board want to make sure their voices are heard on the issue, even if the odds of getting the changes they seek are slim.
Margaret Banyan, an associate professor at Florida Gulf Coast University, and a frequent consultant to local government on planning issues, said the vote to ask for bikeway changes raises an issue that may ultimately be addressed, but will probably fall short of getting SR 82 bike paths moved off the roadbed.
“It’s an important point to make, my goal would be to continue to make the point,” she said. “My goal in voting would be to continue to make that point that at some point, it’s not helpful for safety for cars, or bicycles or pedestrians.”
State Road 82 Improvements
Lee County
Lee Boulevard to Shawnee Road
Begins: 2016
Work: Widen from 2 to 6 lanes, new combined flow interchange at Gunnery/Daniels and SR 82.
Cost: $56.7 million
Shawnee Road to Alabama Road
Begins: 2021/22
Work: Widen from 2-lanes to 6-lane divided highway
Cost: $23 million
Alabama Road to Homestead Road
Begins: 2017/2018
Work. Widen from 2-lanes to 4-lane divided highway
Cost: $39.6 million
Homestead Road to Hendry Line
Begins: 2017/2018
Work: Widen from 2-lanes to 4-lane divided highway
Cost: $18 million