- April 19, 2024
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Considering East County's highly residential makeup, it is expected that more residents and a lack of job opportunities will put stress on the area's roadways in the near future.
It's one of the problems that the Sarasota/Manatee Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO) hopes will be addressed by a plan that has been mulled over for the last 18 months.
To help ease congestion and meet the demands of a growing population, the MPO has been working with the Long Range Transportation Plan Steering Committee and Renaissance Planning Group on an update to its 2040 Long Range Transportation Plan.
The Manatee County Commission reviewed an update of that plan at its Oct. 20 meeting. The MPO approved to put the final draft of the plan out for pubic comment, and it will vote on the plan, also known as the Strategic Mobility Plan, in mid-December.
MPO is able to approve plan, of which two East County projects are a part.
The projects are federally and state funded, from revenues of gas taxes, trust funds and other means, Lepp said. The slated East County projects include a widening from two lanes to four on Upper Manatee River Road, from Fort Hamer Road to State Road 64, with more space included for bicyclists and other multimodal needs. Multimodal roads accommodate bicycles, pedestrians, fire rescue vehicles, trucks and other transportation means other than cars.
“We’re creating roads for multiple means of transportation,” said Nick Lepp, project manager with Renaissance Planning Group. “There’s no more two- or four-lane roads with no sidewalks, shoulders or spaces for people to walk or ride bikes. That’s not consistent with the future of roadwork. We’re building more than the asphalt.”
Estimated cost for the project is $57.6 million.
The other project, which Lepp has noted to be the more controversial one, includes widening Honore Avenue from two lanes to four, from University Parkway to 17th Street, with multimodal options as well.
“Residents have said they don’t want more lanes there,” Lepp said. “They think it’s going to bring more traffic. But Honore is a big road; it runs down to Venice. But it’s that, ‘Not in my backyard,’ mentality. If you build it, more people will come.”
A Honore Avenue expansion is slated to cost $63 million.
The projects are part of the financially feasible project list, or projects that are of high importance and are realistic to fund, Lepp said.
The plan, which has to be updated every five years, earmarks projects to be funded by state and federal governments. Construction on the projects would begin between 2020 and 2040.
That worries District 5 Commissioner Vanessa Baugh, who said the 2040 deadline is too far in the future.
“I don’t know that we can wait that long for some of these projects,” Baugh said. “We're growing out east. So is our county and state."
Much of the growth in the East County area is in terms of population.
Employment growth is a different story. Over the next 20 years, the MPO is forecasting a lack of employment growth east of I-75, while people continue to move to East County. That means residents will be driving out of the area to work.
Lepp said that combination increases the need for roadwork.
"More commuting means more drivers on the roads," Lepp said. "A goal of this transportation plan is congestion management and to provide safety and security in local transportation."
Contact Amanda Sebastiano at [email protected].
