I would like to submit my comments on the traffic study. While the study does have some good recommendations, particularly for intersections, I am appalled at the recommendation to increase A1A to six to 10 lanes.
Instead, it would have been much better for our community to add bike lanes and family-friendly intersections to safeguard and assist the existing community in that locale to access our wonderful resources. For example, many children and families utilize these roads and intersections to walk, ride, skateboard and bike in the area and to the beach. The creation of an eight to 10 lane obstacle course for them to cross A1A is absolutely dangerous! On any weekend, and all through the summer, you will see scores of families dodging the existing traffic to get to the beach with rolling carts, surfboards and beach accoutrements – making A1A wider will make it nearly impossible and possibly deadly.
The additional congestion and noise from more lanes of traffic will also negatively impact the quality of life and home values of the local residents, some of whom have driveways directly onto A1A. The lovely look of this scenic highway with its palm trees and grassy medians should be enhanced – not cemented over so cars can roar by during the day and race by at night. Even further, additional police resources will be required to manage this traffic, representing an additional cost to the community.
Speaking of additional costs, the Ponte Vedra community is effectively funding the failure of the Nocatee developers in that Nocatee residents are utilizing A1A in Ponte Vedra to access JTB for jobs, education, shopping – while in fact those Nocatee residents should have those resources within their own community. It is wrong that the Ponte Vedra community has to pay for the construction of additional lanes to resolve the failure of the Nocatee and other developers in the establishment of Nocatee and other new communities.
Finally, the horrible recommendation to increase A1A to six lanes (and up to 10 lanes at some intersections) will only be a temporary fix for traffic flow, since Nocatee is only partially built out and local developers are planning even more development and these roads will quickly fill up.
Instead, please put your thinking caps back on and develop other roads for Nocatee and the new communities, such as extending a road west to connect to Hodges at JTB – or better yet, do what was promised and develop jobs and schools in the Nocatee area, so these people don’t have to connect with JTB and downtown.
Holly Kartsonis
Ponte Vedra Beach