FRUITVILLE 210
COMMUNITY ALLIANCE
F210 TRAFFIC on I-75
www.Fruitville210.org
Please tell your Neighbor - take a
moment & Email
it to them here . . .
Neighborhoods declare war on traffic - from USA Today, May 2, 1997
SARASOTA, Fla.
Tired of stop-and-go traffic, the time-pressed commuter tries a short cut through neighborhoods on streets that aren't as busy.
Remember as you read this article it was written in 1997 . . .
Here in Sarasota, engineers can barely keep up with demand for traffic calmers. Thirty-five thousand motorists a day travel to jobs downtown. To shave five to 10 minutes off trips, drivers cut through neighborhoods of multimillion dollar Mediterranean homes with bayfront views.
As a result, harried homeowners have fought to have as many as 80 traffic calmers built in their beach resort town since 1990. Twenty-four more will go in this year.
Speed humps are the traffic calmners, most in demand here, as they are across the nation. Not as teeth-rattling as speed bumps found in parking lots, humps rise 3-4 inches above street level and typically are 12 feet long.
Carol Ostling waged a three-year battle to get humps installed on her street after speeding cars killed the family's two cats and nearly plowed down her husband, Robert. He was in his own front yard when a driver sailed onto the lawn, braking just inches from him.
"It was an absolute nightmare," Carol Ostling recalls. "Every other week there was a fender bender. Something had to be done." At times, she says, she felt like screaming, "Don't drive like it's the Indy 500!"
The Ostlings attended endless meetings, made phone calls and circulated petitions because 60% of their neighbors had to agree to the humps.
Since the humps were installed in 1994, traffic has dropped by nearly 50%, to 3,700 cars a day. Speeds have fallen about 10 mph, to 28 mph. The posted speed is 25 mph.
Read the whole article HERE - a PDF window will open
The Florida Department of Transportation is conducting Project Development and Environment (PD&E) Study to evaluate options for widening I-75 in Sarasota County. The project limits for the PD&E Study begin north of SR 681 in Sarasota County and end north
of University Parkway in Manatee County. The PD&E project length is approximately 14 miles. In addition
to the PD&E Study, a traffic study which evaluates possible improvements for interchanges will be conducted. The limits of the traffic study extend from SR 681 in Sarasota County to north of Moccasin Wallow Road in Manatee County.
PARKS
A diverging diamond interchange is a rare form of diamond interchange in which the two directions of traffic on the non-freeway road cross to the opposite side on both sides of the bridge at the freeway. It is unusual in that it requires traffic on the freeway overpass (or underpass)
to briefly drive on the opposite side of the road from that which they are accustomed.
Like the continuous flow intersection, the diverging diamond interchange allows for two-phase operation at all signalized intersections within the interchange. This is a significant improvement in safety, since no left turns must clear opposing traffic and all movements are discrete, with most controlled by traffic signals. Additionally, the design can improve the efficiency of an interchange, as the lost time for various phases in the cycle can be redistributed as green time; there are only two clearance intervals (the time for traffic signals to change from green to yellow to red) instead
of the six or more found in other interchange designs. Some of the intersections in the design can be unsignalized. The left turn from the freeway off-ramp, for example, can form an auxiliary lane that then becomes an exit-only lane for the entrance ramp to the freeway in the opposite direction. Omitting the traffic signals for the left turn movements off the freeway only works well with single left turns and when short queues exist within the interchange on the arterial street.
Above is the
I-75 Exit 210
Interchange
Below is a proposed
Diverging Diamond:
From the Archives:
780
What about . . . a Roundabout
for my neighborhood?
This page was last updated: July 12, 2008
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