Town eyes feasibility study for 12-foot path along Gulf of Mexico Drive

The goal is clear. The town of Longboat Key wants to expand the sidewalk running parallel to Gulf of Mexico Drive to a 12-foot-wide multiuse path on the east side.

“As part of the town’s Gulf of Mexico Drive Complete Streets Corridor Plan, a full 12-foot-wide multiuse trail was identified early on as a key amenity to better service the popular use of the path,” said Assistant Town Manager Isaac Brownman.

How and when the town will reach that goal, however, is not so clear.

The cost, timeframe, design and strategy are all unknown. Public Works Director Charlie Mopps said the project is in early stages that have included informal discussions with Florida Department of Transportation. Cooperating with that state agency is a must.

“It’s all owned by FDOT, 100%,” Mopps said. “Everything that’s on GMD is where we’d be placing these, so everything needs to be permitted through them.”

A memo from Brownman said that the state of Florida would require federal Transportation Alternative funds for the project. Brownman said in the memo that “FDOT would like to be a financial partner, but can only do so with federal TA funds, which means a (project development and environment) study would have to be done at some point,” Brownman’s memo reads.

“They really don’t have state funds set aside for this type of thing that we’re asking for with the trail,” Brownman said at a recent Town Commission workshop meeting. “To access any federal transportation funds, we must do the PD&E process.”

The PD&E study is funded in FDOT’s long-range plan for 2031 through 2035. In the meantime, Mopps said the town is considering whether to perform a feasibility study of its own. A feasibility study would be town-funded and contracted through an engineering firm, would answer many of the questions the town has about the project and show FDOT that the town has investment into the project. It could also reduce the amount of time the PD&E study takes. Those questions include how the project could be phased to be completed, potential costs, whether right-of-way acquisition is necessary, if there are any stormwater issues and what agencies might require permitting.

“If you’re self-funding that, you want to make sure that engineering firm is capturing some of the things that would be required in the PD&E. So when you get to that point you can say that’s already done,” Mopps said. “That shortens that time, it shortens the impact and everything else.”

The trail as it is today varies from 6 to 8 feet wide, Mopps said.

“It’s bits and pieces of sidewalk. It’s not even uniform,” Mopps said. “It’s like they used to be 6 feet and then they tried to add these 2-foot sections, and so it looks disjointed. And every time you have those joints, you just have another trip hazard.”

Expanding the trail may not be a single project, but one broken into segments, a similar strategy to the town’s efforts to make Gulf of Mexico Drive a “Complete Street.”

“Let’s go through and do a feasibility study to figure out what segments should we start permitting,” Mopps said. “How do we connect with everything going to the north of us and everything going on to the south? The fact that they’re going to be replacing Longboat Pass bridge. Well, we probably don’t want to spend millions of dollars doing that segment just to have it then get ripped up with the bridge project.”

Mopps said there seems to be plenty of space to expand the sidewalk, but whether right-of-way acquisition is necessary is something that would be evaluated in a feasibility study.

“If they go towards GMD, yes (there’s space) in a lot of cases,” Mopps said. “The existing sidewalk is on the edge of the right-of-way in some areas, but there’s even space to the west in other areas so you have room to work on either side. But the right-of-way is another element that the feasibility study would look at.”