A plan to convert the one-way portions of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Drive and Davis Highway that run parallel to Interstate 110 in Pensacola into two-way roads is dead.
City officials informed the City Council on June 15 that the Florida Department of Transportation withdrew its support for the idea while the city was in the middle of designing the concept and found that the project’s cost would have continued to rise.
Pensacola Mayor D.C. Reeves said on June 17 that the city had already committed to designing the project, but FDOT said the city would have had to fund a likely $6 million project and then take over maintenance of the two streets.
The streets are part of State Road 291, so FDOT is responsible for maintaining and managing traffic on them.
Taking on a major commitment while the outcome of this fall’s property tax referendum remains unknown did not seem like a good idea, Reeves said.
“When you want to talk about how things have changed in the last 90 days, how responsible would it have been?” Reeves said. “One: We don’t have the $6 million; frankly, we don’t have it. There would be nowhere to find that. And two: Our taxpayers in the city taking the maintenance of a road that’s currently a state road is just not feasible.”
The roads were converted to one-way streets before the construction of the I-110 overpass to allow for faster travel times to downtown.
In the last 10 years, there has been a renewed focus on making streets safer for pedestrians and bikers and one-way streets with limited stops for cars through residential areas seemed like an obvious change to planners. In 2019, then-Pensacola Mayor Grover Robinson put forward a proposal to ask FDOT to convert the streets to two-way streets.
A feasibility study in 2020 showed the plan was feasible but would require constructing a roundabout where the two streets merge just south of the Fairfield Drive and I-110 exit on Davis Highway.
Reeves said the required roundabout accounted for a large portion of the project’s cost.
With Pensacola backing the project, the Florida-Alabama Transportation Planning Organization, a collection of the region’s local governments that sets priorities for FDOT projects, put the project on its priority list.
In 2024, Pensacola approved using $800,000 in federal funds from the American Rescue Plan Act to help pay for the design and engineering work, with the assumption that FDOT would pay for the project when the time came for the road to be repaved and modernized.
Pensacola Public Works Director Amy Toodle told the council on June 15 that while the city was working on the design, FDOT reversed course and said it wouldn’t support the two-way conversion. The city was left with a choice of whether to continue funding design work for a project that may never get built.
FDOT would have allowed the city to pay for the project, but the city would have had to take over responsibility for maintaining the road in perpetuity.
The City Council is set to vote on June 18 to transfer the $391,947 in unspent ARPA funds to the ongoing Main Street stormwater project to get it spent by Sept. 30. Any unspent ARPA funds left on the books by that date have to be returned to the federal government.
Reeves said he understands why FDOT has higher priorities for safety improvements, and the city works together on multiple projects with FDOT.
“They’re supportive of us in many, many projects and helpful to us in many projects,” Reeves said. “This is just one where it didn’t go our way, and that’s OK, and so unfortunate, of course, but we’ll move on to all the dozens of other things that we’re working on with them.”
Jim Little is the City Government Accountability Reporter for the Pensacola News Journal. If you have a news tip, please send it to jwlittle@pnj.com.
This article originally appeared on Pensacola News Journal: Plan to make MLK Jr. Drive and Davis Highway two-way streets is dead
Reporting by Jim Little, Pensacola News Journal / Pensacola News Journal
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By Jim Little, Pensacola News Journal | USA TODAY Network
