Siesta merchants fear traffic backup from FDOT plan

Siesta Key Village Association members have told the Florida Department of Transportation not to mess with their merge.

A brief stretch of Midnight Pass Road became a contentious subject at Tuesday’s SKVA meeting when transportation officials presented preliminary plans to remove a small stretch of merging lane at Midnight Pass and Stickney Point.

The proposed changes are part of an FDOT effort to minimize pedestrian accidents at the intersection, but association members worried that removing a stretch of lane that allows traffic to merge with northbound vehicles on Midnight Pass Road would create significant congestions. That change would effectively eliminate the illusion of a “free-flow” right lane at the intersection, according to L.K. Nandam, traffic operations engineer for FDOT.

But many of those present at the meeting suggested pedestrian accidents may be cause more by pedestrian error or disregard for the law than by driver error.

“It’s hard to make it moron proof,” said Mark Smith, Vice President of the SKVA. “There’s a certain amount of Darwinism that goes with everything.”

Association members also questioned whether or not pedestrian accidents at that intersection were statistically significant.

“I’m concerned when we assemble data that there were one or two real, probably avoidable, incidents and then mass it with the overall data and get a big number,” said Commissioner Alan Maio.

Maio asked for more data on pedestrian crashes to gauge whether action was really needed.

Michael Shay, maintenance manager for the Siesta Key Village Maintenance Corp., added, “ to create a situation to protect someone who shouldn’t be crossing there — I’ve got a problem with that.”

Nandam said pedestrian crashes are generally cumulative over large areas, and high-profile intersections are difficult to find.

“You’re not going to have (those),” Nandam said, citing a look at 20 accident-prone intersections in the district comprising Sarasota. “Guess what? There were three crashes, four crashes in two years at each of those locations. However you compile them together and suddenly you’re the top ranked metropolitan area for (lowest) pedestrian safety in the nation.”

Nandam thanked the group for its input and said that, after the meeting, he and his staff would attempt to redesign the changes without removing the merge lane, but preserving changes to the bike lane. He also agreed to abide Maio’s suggestion to explore testing the changes with measures that were easily removable so they could be removed if necessary.