St. Johns County has a plan on how to improve the traffic and extended backups taking place at the intersection of State Road A1A, Mickler Road and Ponte Vedra Boulevard.
That plan was presented to the community for feedback during an open house at the Ponte Vedra Concert Hall Dec. 13, where members of the county’s public works department were on hand to answer questions and explain the project to residents.
The goal of the project is to improve traffic flow by adding two additional turn lanes on Mickler Road to turn onto A1A heading north; one additional left-turn lane from Ponte Vedra Boulevard for those heading south on A1A; and one additional lane northbound on A1A.
The estimated project budget is $4.3 million and will be funded through impact fees and a grant awarded from the Florida Department of Transportation.
“About five or six years ago, the North Florida TPO (Transportation Planning Organization) did a study along A1A and identified some intersections that needed improvements, and this is one of those intersections,” St. Johns County Engineer Duane Kent said. “In the mornings and in the evenings, you wait for several cycles of the light to get through.”
According to Kent, if nothing is done, the length of time with which people are having to wait will only continue to grow.
“Right now, it’s kind of bad for an hour, well if we let it go, then it will be an hour and a half to two hours and just keep growing,” Kent said. “A lot of accidents are caused by people being impatient and pulling out when they shouldn’t because they’ve been waiting so long. By reducing the time it takes to get through the intersection, it will improve the quality of life.”
There will be two lanes to receive traffic turning onto A1A going north from Mickler road, but one of those lanes will eventually merge into the other as it gets farther away from the intersection.
“A lot of people in the Ponte Vedra area are worried about the four-laning of Mickler and the four laning or six-laning of all of A1A,” Kent said. “St. Johns County is growing, but we’re not at the point where we need to do that right now.”
However, he did not rule out the fact of that being a viable solution down the road, but at this point he sees the intersection improvements as the best fix for the current situation.
“There’s always a few people who are vocal, but there just being passionate about where they live and what’s going on in their neighborhood, and that’s a great thing,” Kent said. “If there is something that needs to be changed or can be changed, we will remain active during the construction.”
Danielle Faldetta was one of the residents who attended the event and left with concerns about the project.
“I feel that they dropped the ball year’s ago, even though there was a massive plan for Nocatee,” Faldetta said. “They really didn’t do a great or thorough traffic plan of what this would do to what I would call the ‘locals.’ At this point, the traffic is so bad, that most people can’t even make a righthand turn (onto A1A), forget about making a lefthand turn and going across traffic. Now we’ll increase it to two turning lanes and have even more traffic flow, so it’s only going to exasperate the issue.”
Faldetta was also concerned about the safety of pedestrians walking and biking along the route with the proposed intersection improvements, because she herself enjoys biking.
“I fear that pedestrian safety wasn’t taken into proper consideration, and it was all about the (vehicle) traffic,” Faldetta said.
The permits and bids process will take place in spring 2023 with the construction of the project slated to begin in summer 2023. Kent stated that it will take about nine months to complete.
