As shops are built, traffic bottles up
Road construction vies with retail expansion to distract and bedevil drivers on Park Boulevard between Belcher Road and 66th Street.
By JEAN HELLER, ANNE LINDBERG and JON WILSON, Times Staff Writers
© St. Petersburg Times,
published July 8, 2001
[Times photo: Michael Rondou]
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Construction at Park Boulevard and 66th Street slows traffic to a crawl. Lanes have been closed for roadwork as new businesses sprout up on one of the busiest thoroughfares in southern Pinellas.
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PINELLAS PARK -- On a recent Saturday afternoon, a time of leisure for most people, tempers and blood pressures ran high along the stretch of Park Boulevard between Belcher Road and 66th Street.
Traffic was stopped in both directions because lanes had been closed for road construction. The construction will accommodate several huge new businesses at an intersection along what is one of the busiest and most dangerous thoroughfares in the southern half of Pinellas County.
Already there is a Sam's Club at Belcher and Park, along with a busy restaurant, a crowded service station and a convenience store. Just to the west are the Mustang and Wagon Wheel flea markets. Coming soon are a large CVS drugstore, a new Publix and a Lowe's home improvement store.
"Oh, man, that corridor is already a mess," said Cpl. Glenn Luben of the traffic division of the Pinellas County Sheriff's Office.
He said planners are letting the development proceed because a new extension of Bryan Dairy Road to Interstate 275 will ease congestion on Park and Ulmerton Road.
But, he points out, that project is a year or more away. Until then, most days on Park will be ugly. And Park isn't alone.
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[Times photo: Fred Victorin]
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Judy Warren, who commutes daily through this convergence of Tyrone Boulevard, 66th Street N and 22nd Avenue, shares her tip: She drives south on 66th, across Tyrone to the next light at 22nd Avenue, then turns left. "I don't know if it saves a lot of time. But it saves a lot of aggravation."
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The need to drive is a sorry fact of life in south Pinellas. Yet for most of us, nearly every driving venture beyond the neighborhood provides at least one good reason to become a hermit.
Each of us has one or two places we must go in our cars that we would give anything to avoid. Congestion. Construction. Intersections and stretches of road that seem to have been designed by blind armadillos.
We feel your pain -- the fact is, we share it every day.
Now, Neighborhood Times has compiled a list of the worst of the worst, the places where the mere anticipation of a driving experience can raise your blood pressure: the most dangerous intersections, the most clogged stretches of road, spots where the road is in such bad shape you can't help but wonder whether it wouldn't be better to drive on bare mud.
Our conclusions are subjective, but well-researched. We surveyed police traffic officers, planners and lots of commuters to come up with our lists.
Truthfully, it is impossible to judge the absolute worst intersection or stretch of road between Roosevelt/East Bay on the north and Mullet Key on the south. But we decided to do it anyway.
[Times photo: Daniel Wallace]
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An aerial view shows the intricate design of the intersection of Fourth Street N, Roosevelt and Gandy, the sixth worst in St. Petersburg for crashes last year. Police say drivers misjudge the crossing's size and how long it takes to get through it. Design improvements such as a flyover will be discussed this fall.
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Plenty of traffic horrors rise to contender as the worst in south county: the rabbit-warren intersection of Gandy, Roosevelt and Fourth Street N in St. Petersburg, for example, or the ongoing agony of Tyrone Boulevard, 66th Street and 22nd Avenue N.
Nor can anyone ignore the congestion of Gulf Boulevard along the beaches and on the bridges. Or the most-favored place in the county to run red lights, at Roosevelt Boulevard and 28th Street N. Or the intersection of Pasadena and Central avenues in St. Petersburg, where repaving has been postponed so long that the potholes have offspring.
Then there is the spaghetti bowl of lanes of I-275 between The Pier and the Tropicana Field exits, where, if you don't know where you are going, only a stroke of luck will put you in the correct lane for Bradenton.
It isn't always congestion, construction and traffic law violations that make driving here a headache. Sometimes it is something as small as a bad redesign of an existing road to handle new development.
Statistics, anecdotal evidence and the gut hunches of police officials and motorists suggest that the most frustrating and threatening of all situations is east-west travel at mid county.
There are three alternatives, none good: Roosevelt/East Bay, Ulmerton Road and Park Boulevard.
[Times photo: Michael Rondou]
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The gateways to the beach, such as this drawbridge on Gulf Boulevard between Madeira Beach and Treasure Island, seem to inspire the most complaints from motorists. In the next few years, bridge construction such as the new Bayway span to St. Pete Beach is likely to add to the complaints.
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Roosevelt has been improved, but hair-pulling congestion remains the norm. Ulmerton and Park are hopeless, even in midsummer. And now the road construction to benefit even more new commercial enterprises has elevated Park from a headache to a migraine.
The new alternative under construction will cut Bryan Dairy Road through from its current dead end at 66th Street to U.S. 19, and then, using the 118th Avenue corridor, all the way to the new interchange being built at I-275 and Roosevelt.
The new corridor is scheduled for completion in about 18 months, but tangential projects, such as a new U.S. 19 flyover at 118th Avenue, are years down the road.
And so it seems probable that, for a time at least, the intersection at Park and Belcher will join six other Park Boulevard intersections -- at Seminole, 66th Street, Starkey, 113th Street, 49th Street and U.S. 19 -- among the most dangerous places to be on the street in the southern half of Pinellas County.
Bumper to bumper
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