- April 8, 2026
-
-
Loading
Loading
When Maureen Merrigan plans get-togethers with her family in Cortez, she schedules based on the weather and time of day.
That’s because on a good beach day, that 15-minute trip to the mainland from her home on the northern end of Longboat Key can become an hour-long drive.
To get to Cortez from the northern end of Longboat Key, she has to drive through the southern end of Anna Maria Island. Rows of short-term rentals, restaurants, bars and the Bridge Street Pier stand between Longboaters on their way to Cortez and Bradenton. Those attractions bring thousands of visitors — and traffic.
“The beach traffic just really jams it up, just stops it,” Merrigan said. “And it’s huge lots that are off (Longboat Key), which we don’t really have much control of, and that Bridge Street pedestrian area.”
Town Clerk Trish Shinkle commutes from Bradenton to Town Hall every day. She also said delays in her commute stem from people leaving the beach parking lots.
“It’s all the cars coming out of the beach,” Shinkle said. “They just keep coming.”
That’s frustrating because Bradenton Beach isn’t the destination for most people leaving Longboat Key.
“On the north end when I leave the north end of Longboat Key, I’m typically not going to Anna Maria Island,” Merrigan said. “I’m going into Bradenton. To a doctor, to a dentist, to a Home Depot or to the airport.”
Bradenton Beach traffic is on another level than Longboat.
According to FDOT data, the annual average daily traffic at Gulf Drive and Fourth Street South is 17,000 vehicles, which is 79% more traffic than the northern corridor of Longboat Key sees.
And Bradenton Beach traffic has risen year over year. From 2009 to 2021, the number of vehicles passing by the FDOT checkpoint hovered around 11,000. That grew to 13,329 in 2022, then 13,900 in 2023, then 15,500 in 2024. Last year saw another hike in traffic to 17,000. Thats more than a 50% increase in traffic over four years.
Andre Wilkinson hosts bingo night at Drift-in AMI at Bradenton Beach. He leaves his house in Bradenton hours before the first number is pulled.
“I’m usually here from 1 to 5. I do the entertainment at the bar. To get down here in time, I have to leave my house around 10 o’clock just to get here for 1 o’clock,” Wilkinson said. “It’s almost like clockwork. Right around 10:30, 11 o’clock, everything starts backing up and you’re just sitting in traffic. Thirty minutes plus waiting in traffic to come over the bridge.”
As traffic increases year after year, town leaders hear the feedback from Longboat residents. Longboat Key Town Commissioner Steve Branham is a board member of the Sarasota/Manatee Metropolitan Planning Organization and said “the nature of the roadways and how they’re designed” is a part of the problem.
State Road 789 on Anna Maria Island is mostly a two-lane road with some median turn lanes that give drivers access to parking lots. At Coquina Beach, an expansive lot with free parking is often filled with beachgoers.
“The bottleneck is the Bradenton Beach area for two reasons. One, Coquina Beach and the traffic in and out of there, which is significant, trying to merge all those exits coming out of the Coquina Beach parking lot, and two, the Cortez Bridge,” Branham said.
FDOT is spending big on infrastructure in the area. More than $135 million is being spent to replace the Cortez Bridge and the state could spend a similar amount on replacing the Longboat Pass Bridge eventually. While those hundred-million-dollar bridges are necessary investments as the existing spans are more than 65 years old, they’re not expected to solve the traffic issue.
“If you’re sitting on Longboat Pass Bridge in traffic waiting to go to Cortez, you’re going to wait for the bridge to close so you can pass over it, and then run right into the back of traffic that’s waiting a little bit farther north,” Branham said. “So I don’t think it’s going to significantly change with a high-level bridge that doesn’t restrict flow. It's just going to be crowded because that’s not the bottleneck, if you ask me.”
Road improvements aren’t planned between the two bridge projects, but a Project Development and Environment study is evaluating proposed improvements to State Road 789 on Bradenton Beach and Holmes Beach. The project website describes a goal to “evaluate multimodal alternatives for the main north-south corridor on Anna Maria Island traversing cities of Bradenton Beach and Holmes Beach.”
“FDOT will consider strategies to improve pedestrian and bicycle safety and enhance mobility options for all users along the study corridor while maintaining the quality of life for residents and visitors,” the project website states. “Multimodal alternatives will be studied to meet the project needs and goals.”
FDOT did not respond to questions about barrier island traffic issues in time for publication. The Barrier Island PD&E study costs about $1.7 million and is expected to be completed by the end of 2026. The next phase would be the design phase if FDOT decides to make improvements to State Road 789 based on the findings of the PD&E study.
Traffic decongestion isn’t mentioned as a goal of improvements, but Branham said he hopes the PD&E will lead to “projects that can be identified as the most beneficial to dealing with the problems.”
If you’ve ever wondered why Longboat Key town offices close at four instead of five, try driving off the island at 5 p.m. during peak season.
Shinkle has commuted to Longboat Key from Bradenton for years and remembers when town offices still closed at 5 p.m. It was quite the hassle getting home.
“I remember one night sitting on the bridge and I texted (former town manager) Tom Harmer and said ‘I’m still on the bridge, but I got to see the sun set and the moon rise.’ That night it was like two hours,” Shinkle said.
Since the town changed its hours to open at 7:30 a.m. and close at 4 p.m., she said the commute has been more bearable. But there are still bad days during busy season.
The inevitable Bradenton Beach backup has not only caused a change in town office hours, but leads residents to alter their habits. Merrigan said altering your schedule around Bradenton Beach traffic is part of the north-end resident experience.
“In terms of what you experience as a resident up here, you just know when to go off the island and when to come back on the island,” Merrigan said. “So if I want to go food shopping off the island or do anything off the north end. Go to the doctor, dentist, get a haircut, you have to leave in a way that you’re not coming back on the island before noon because the traffic backs up so much in town to come back on the island.”
Another strategy north-end residents take to avoid traffic congestion is to ride their bike rather than drive.
The three-mile trip from the northern tip of Longboat Key to the mainland is manageable by bike, and residents commonly get to pedaling to bypass traffic jams.
“If I want to go to see my parents or relatives in Cortez in the afternoon, I take a bike always, and I ride past all the traffic,” Merrigan said. “You just ride right past them, and it’s a safe ride because no one is moving.”
Longboat Key employees use bikes to bypass traffic as well. Shinkle said a large chunk of the Public Works team pedals to the beach. The Public Works office is located on General Harris Street a little more than a mile from the Longboat Pass Bridge.
“One day when we had our commission meeting that went to 5 o’clock and I didn’t get out of here until 5:15, I was sitting on the bridge and Public Works guys were buzzing by me on their electric bikes,” Shinkle said. “So they got home earlier than I did.”
