Driving in Bradenton could look like this in 50 years. Yes, there will be more traffic
In the next 50 years, roads in the Bradenton and Sarasota areas are likely to see the arrival of self-driving vehicles, more mass transit — including rail — more toll lanes and more new technologies.
All that and many more people, too, living and visiting here.
Planning for coming future transportation needs, and recommending road improvement priorities on an already overloaded road system is what faces the Sarasota/Manatee Planning Organization.
Monday, the MPO held its fourth Transform Tomorrow forum at State College of Florida to unveil the community vision for the long-range transportation plan. The series of forums started a year ago at USF Sarasota-Manatee.
Survey results in planning for the future transportation network showed that maintaining vibrant places in the community and protecting environmental health rank among the top preferences of more than 2,000 respondents to an MPO online survey.
Also ranking among the top choices was more economic diversity.
The map presented Monday showed that the road network of the next 50 years will look a lot like the road network of today. Interstate 75 would be designated as the regional employment corridor, while the Tamiami Trail is identified as the high-tech, education and cultural corridor.
The map also showed potential intercity rail from Fruitville Road north through Bradenton and Palmetto into Hillsborough County, connecting with a state rail system that runs from Tampa to Orlando and south to Miami.
Other possible changes include premium transit tourism corridors to Anna Maria Island and Longboat Key.
Multimodal corridors are shown between Ellenton and Palmetto on U.S. 301, and on State Road 70 between I-75 and Tamiami Trail. A premium transit corridor is shown on State Road 64 between I-75 and Tamiami Trail.
“Put on your seat belts because we are going to cover 50 years in about 50 minutes,” Leigh Holt, strategic planning manager for the MPO, told a fall house of officials and interested citizens of the unveiling of priorities.
L. K. Nandam, district secretary for the Florida Department of Transportation, said that to succeed, a traffic plan must be coordinated with updated master and comprehensive land-use plans.
“If you want to make a difference in mobility and safety, land-use and mobility must be integrated,” Nandam said.
One of the challenges of funding future road improvements is that the gas taxes being paid into state trust fund will begin to decline in the year 2026, with the advent of more electric cars and fuel-efficient vehicles, he said.
Change is needed to ensure a sustainable trust fund, Nandam said.
Discussion about traffic begins with road safety, he said, adding that four people would die on Florida’s road during the few hours that the Monday’s traffic forum was being held.
Chris Sinclair, founder of Renaissance Planning, served as keynote speaker for Monday’s forum.
Asked how to envision a road system a half century in the future, Sinclair said it is instructive to look back 50 years, to a time when there were no interstate highways, and downtowns were walkable areas.
“People could use buses to go to other cities; they could use trains to get to other cities. The ability to use different modes of transportation since the 1940s and 1950s has gone away and we have over-relied on automobiles. That has become the only way to get around. The only way to get back to the place where we were in terms of walking to places is you have to focus on transportation but you also have to focus on communities and how communities get put together. Most communities today are put together with the assumption that you fundamentally have to get around by car. That is the big change that has to happen,” Sinclair said.
Holt said government is challenged to work faster and smarter by the accelerating pace of change. The MPO is expected to complete the updated long-range plan in September.
Citizens still have the opportunity to participate in the online survey at https://www.mympo.org/TransformTomorrow.
This story was originally published February 25, 2020 at 5:00 AM.
