Last night under Unfinished Business, the US-1 Multimodal Corridor Study was discussed. It took over one hour on this item that went on and on.
Of course, we no longer are a town but a small growing city with
a 34.6% White population and 51% English speaking. There is a lot of poverty. The population density here is 6,303 people per square mile and the city government is allowing development all over the place. People living on top of people and we are to assume that our residents are so poor they need to walk or ride bikes. So, let's get the Feds involved to pick up the tab and reduce a major highway built in 1926 to three lanes in Lake Worth (Beach). What about just reducing illegal immigration?
So how do we fix all this? This administration wants to reduce the number of lanes on Highway US-1 from 4 lanes to 3 causing more tie-ups and congestion than we have now. They believe that kidding themselves (and us) into believing this should be a residential road instead of a highway will attract people to the businesses on Dixie. And people should use I-95 to get to where they want to go, not Dixie Highway. Cutting through to neighborhoods to get to their homes from Dixie Highway is also undesirable according to this commission.
Pretty rendering. The only thing worse than being blind is having sight but no vision...in this case, not acknowledging the future growth of our city that will need more lanes, not less.
Notice one lane is dedicated for buses. There are bike lanes on both sides of the highway. There is one through lane going north and one through lane going south where cars turning onto Lake will slow down traffic even more.
In 2017-2018, The TPA (the Palm Beach Transportation Planning Agency) did a study from Boca to Jupiter crossing 14 communities. What they found in Lake Worth (Beach) were:
Depression rate at 18.7% (If there is any depression it is because of the decisions that this commission makes)
Obesity rate 31.1%
Bicycle/Pedestrian Incident/Mile 3.1%
The TPA suggested in its plan, electric buses and enhanced transit shelters even with Wi-Fi.
The commission voted unanimously 5/0 to spend $70,000 (CRA contributing $25k) on a study to see if turning a highway into a road, that would take about 5 years, would be feasible. Commissioner Robinson wasn't happy with the idea but voted with the majority.
This highway is used by thousands of vehicles every day with thousands more people moving here every year.
