Weather | Sports | Forums | Comics | Classifieds | Calendar | Movies
By JEAN HELLER
© St. Petersburg Times, published February 4, 2001
Sometimes, the very best discoveries happen by accident.
For example, if Isaac Newton hadn't been sitting under an apple tree when a piece of fruit decided it was time for a getaway, who would know today why we all stick to the Earth instead of floating off into the ether like dandelion seeds in a high breeze?
So, too, has an unidentified -- and therefore unheralded -- hero among the Pinellas County sheriff's deputies discovered a keen new way to get motorists to obey the speed limit.
Jessie and I were returning from Tampa last week. We crossed the Gandy Bridge, and suddenly ahead of us appeared a sheriff's unit, driving exactly the speed limit in the left of the westbound lanes.
Now we've all driven behind police cars before, and sometimes we stay back and sometimes we pass -- carefully. But nobody was passing this deputy. His light bar was switched on, and the blue and red sparklers were the brightest thing on the road on a gray and rainy day. He must have been on a call, we thought.
Stay back. Don't pass.
Or perhaps this was a new, fine-free way to enforce the speed limit. Who is going to speed by a deputy with his light bar aglow?
"I'll tell you exactly what that was all about," said Cpl. Glenn Luben of the Sheriff's Office Traffic Division. "He forgot it was on."
Excuse us?
"Yep," Glenn said. "We've all done it. You can see it flashing at night. But you can't see it during the day, and there is no interior indicator light. He just forgot to turn it off."
"But it was working so well slowing traffic down," we said.
He laughed. "Maybe it's something we should keep in mind," he said.
Okay, listen up, folks. There are some road closings out there you should know about. It's Sewer Repair Time in the city.
Thirty-Fifth Street from Fifth Avenue N to just south of Ninth Avenue N is closed for three weeks.
Poplar Street between 34th and 36th avenues N is closed.
Ninth Avenue N from 34th to 37th streets will close on Feb. 12.
In all cases, eastbound and westbound traffic will be affected, and detours will be in place. Work at all three sites will be completed Feb. 19, according to the city of St. Petersburg.
Alas, the city did not specify which year.
We suppose a lot of you out there know this already, and perhaps some of you learned it the hard way. Parking in a handicapped spot without the proper permit now carries a fine of $250 in St. Petersburg. What some of you apparently didn't know until recently is that you can get hit with the same fine for parking in an access area next to a handicapped spot.
Those crosshatched areas are there to provide wheelchair access to vehicles for handicapped drivers and passengers. If your car is parked in the access, the handicapped spot is useless.
Just a friendly reminder from Jessie, the pothole pooch.
You might have noticed as you travel I-275 or duck off at Tropicana Field on I-175, the state roadies have been testing those new electronic signs, expected to provide traffic and weather assistance to motorists when there are events at The Trop.
Each of the three signs comes equipped with an adjustable camera so St. Petersburg Police and traffic folks can keep an eye on conditions and warn drivers if there are accidents, bad weather or construction delays in their paths -- or if there are special parking procedures at The Trop they need to know about.
The preliminary tests should be done by the time you read this.
The plan then is to let the system run for 60 days, what is called a burn-in period, then run another series of tests before the system goes into full operation. So far, so good, we're told. The system should be up and running by the time the first umpire yells, "Play ball!"
Speed bumps coming to a block near you.
Attention Pinellas Park. The county poobahs in charge of such things have approved the installation of four -- count 'em four -- speed bumps on 68th Avenue N between 71st and 66th streets.
The blocks are fronted with single-family residential properties, Pinellas Park Middle School, a bank and the Juvenile Welfare Board. Folks had been complaining that vehicles just passing through were doing so at excessive speeds.
Your poobahs listened and deemed speed bumps a worthy request.
Nice poobahs.
More concrete slab rehab on I-275 this week. Watch for closure of two of the three northbound lanes between 54th Avenue S and 26th Avenue S from 7:30 p.m. to 7 a.m. Sunday through Thursday nights, Feb. 4-8, and Sunday night, Feb. 11. Expect some delays in that area during the closures.
We have, by actual count, 7,218,764,013 complaints on the desk involving the state of the pavement along 34th Street. Well, maybe not that many, but a lot. It is definitely the Eyeball Jiggler of the Week.
Jessie and some bloodhound friends have gotten to the bottom of it.
The resurfacing and rehab of the 34th Street corridor is a 375-calendar day job brought to us by our friendly state roadies. It began last Sept. 5. It should be finished next Sept. 15. One coat of new asphalt has been put down. Now the contractors are focused on sidewalk drainage and drilling for the mast arms that will support traffic lights and street markings.
Both aspects of the project are time consuming. And the final course of asphalt won't go down until near the end. So be patient. The rough road could be with us through the summer.
- Dr. Delay can be reached by e-mail at docdelay@sptimes.com, by fax at (727) 893-8675 or by mail at 490 First Ave., S, St. Petersburg, FL 33701.