Representatives from the Madeira and Tennis Village communities are challenging a proposal to redesign an intersection on U.S. 1, calling it a “flawed intersection design” that will create traffic hazards.
Residents in the community have filed a comprehensive Community Safety Hazard Report and Administrative Objection with Florida Department of Transportation District 2 and the St. Johns County Commission.
According to Keith M. Hennek from the Madeira Neighborhood and Tennis Village Condo Association, residents planned to present a petition to the County Commission during public comment at the regularly scheduled meeting on Tuesday, June 16.
Residents are requesting an immediate project pause on a “manufactured highway crisis on U.S. 1 North and Ponce Island Drive” until FDOT conducts a comprehensive traffic analysis using 2026 volumes.
After “extensive research,” Hennek said he discovered a lack of integrity in FDOT’s data plan to insert a restricted crossing U-turn near Ponce Island Drive, formerly known as Camacha Park Drive, directly across San Sebastian View and the Gate gas station.
According to the proposed design, traffic wishing to turn south from Ponce Island Drive onto U.S. 1 will instead be forced north to make a U-turn at the main entrance of the Madeira neighborhood in order to head south.
“The problem is multi-layered and creates an immediate, high-speed collision trap,” he said. “FDOT’s entire intersection redesign relies on an obsolete 2018 traffic study baseline of 24,000 cars per day. Active regional telemetry reveals that corridor traffic has actually exploded by nearly 50%. Today, over 32,500 active vehicles per day hit this exact stretch of highway.”
According to Hennek, the proposed RCUT layout eliminates direct left turns out of Ponce Island Drive, funneling hundreds of residential family vehicles north to execute a dangerous, unprotected, high-speed U-turn at Maralinda Drive — directly in front of a gated neighborhood entrance.
“This dangerous residential bottleneck sits directly along the frontage of the incoming 170,000-square-foot Madeira Commercial Parcels business development, which will simultaneously dump a massive wave of exiting retail traffic into the exact same lanes,” he said.
In what he described as a regional domino effect, Hennek said that “because exiting commercial and residential drivers will find it physically impossible to safely cross over high-speed traffic, a massive wave of vehicles will be forced north to execute emergency U-turns at Lewis Speedway. This layout directly displaces severe traffic overflow into the critical, already-stressed gateway serving the St. Johns County Government Complex and the Sheriff’s Office.”
“This is a public safety crisis,” he said. “Under Florida Statute 316.126, emergency vehicles have the right-of-way, but bumper-to-bumper gridlock strips motorists of the physical space required to safely pull over, creating active delays for local police, fire, and ambulance response times.
“We will ask for a standard traffic signal so cars can make a left turn, a right turn and a U-turn,” he said. “A normal traffic light that will not restrict or bottleneck traffic right in front of our neighborhood.”
Hennek told the St. Augustine Record that he had not previously discussed the issue with any of the commissioners and that he will also request that the issue be placed on the docket as an agenda item.
This article originally appeared on St. Augustine Record: Residents sound alarm on highway design at US 1 and Ponce Island Drive
Reporting by Lucia Viti, St. Augustine Record / St. Augustine Record
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
By Lucia Viti, St. Augustine Record | USA TODAY Network
