Residents heard firsthand from town officials at a forum on Tuesday about everything the town is doing, or trying to do, to reduce the pain of traffic congestion in Palm Beach.
The Palm Beach Civic Association and Town of Palm Beach co-hosted the forum, called “Moving Forward: Traffic Solutions 33480.”
More than 60 people attended the two-hour program, moderated by Michael Pucillo, the Civic Association’s chairman and chief executive officer.
Pucillo said the forum was arranged to let residents know what the town is doing to address the traffic problem, hear suggestions from the town about what residents can do, and to hear residents’ questions and ideas about possible solutions.
“I can’t think of any issue that has a greater effect on daily lives of those residing in the town of Palm Beach than traffic,” Pucillo said.
Town Manager Kirk Blouin led a panel of senior town officials that included Public Works Director Paul Brazil, Police Chief Nicholas Caristo, Town Attorney Joanne O’Connor, and Zoning Director Wayne Bergman.
Panelists answered written questions submitted by the audience and read aloud by Pucillo.
The forum began with a presentation from Blouin, who said the volume of traffic has increased significantly while the town’s road system is fully built with no capacity for expansion.
The problem is compounded by the U.S. Secret Service’s closure of South Ocean Boulevard near Mar-a-Lago when President Trump is in town; drawbridge openings to accommodate marine traffic; and additional, on-demand drawbridge openings for barges hauling sand dredged from the Peanut Island area.
But that isn’t all of it, Blouin said. There’s been an explosion of growth and tourism in Palm Beach County in the last two to five years. At the same time, Palm Beach’s townwide utility burial project, scheduled for completion in 2027, and other construction and service-driven trips onto the island, all contribute to the traffic snarls.
“The majority [of vehicles] coming onto the island are service personnel,” Blouin said.
Adam Kerr, transportation engineer with Kimley-Horn and Associates, a traffic consultant to the town, said Palm Beach experienced an annual growth rate of about 3 percent in traffic volume for five years. But last year the growth jumped to 6 percent.
“The growth isn’t limited to Palm Beach,” Kerr said. “It’s a regional issue.”
According to data recorded last year, daily trips on the Flagler (north) Memorial Bridge number 19,000; on the Royal Park (middle) Bridge, 27,000; on the Southern Boulevard Bridge, 12,500, Kerr said.
Traffic congestion can be addressed in three ways, Kerr said. Increase road capacity, decrease destination demand, or spread the volume so it is less concentrated at any given time.
Kimley-Horn is assisting the town as it looks at options for redesigning traffic lanes on Bradley Place between Sunrise Avenue and the busy intersection at Royal Poinciana Way, where vehicles travel in and out of town on the Flagler (north) bridge. Options include converting on-street parking spaces on that block into additional travel lanes, and creating a “slip lane” to ease the flow of southbound Bradley Place traffic onto the north bridge.
The town is also considering installing a traffic signal at the intersection of Bradley Place and Sunset Avenue.
These ideas have been presented to the Palm Beach Town Council, which has asked staff to return with estimates on the cost of the alternatives.
The town has cameras with limited artificial intelligence capacity on the three bridges. When the roadblock was recently lifted near Mar-a-Lago, traffic decreased by 16 percent on the Flagler bridge and by 23 percent on the Royal Park span, Blouin said.
He has said the town has a reached a “breaking point” with traffic congestion, and that staff is doing everything in its power to alleviate the problem.
“We are just looking to mitigate – yards, feet, inches – any way we can,” he said Tuesday.
Blouin outlined some steps the town is taking to improve traffic flow.
- Designation of right-turn-only lanes at Brazilian and Barton avenues.
- Use of real-time data to adjust signalization at intersections.
- Delaying utility-related drilling work on the main traffic arteries until the summer months. Delaying until summer the paving of streets where utilities have been buried.
- Considering hiring more staff to help manage traffic.
- Limiting utility burial work to east-west streets during the season. Utility undergrounding in the north and south corridors between Wells Road and Hammon Avenue is being postponed until summer, Blouin said.
- Designating more flexible hours for landscapers and construction teams to work on the island so they can arrive and leave the island before the morning and afternoon/evening traffic rush hours.
- Blouin said the town is considering the legality of requiring construction companies to shuttle their workers on and off the island. He said construction companies have said they would pass on the increased costs to homeowners.
- Another proposal, for the Town Council to declare a moratorium on the construction of single-family homes and certain additions, is under legal review, Blouin said.
The town does not control the schedule of drawbridge openings. The bridges are owned by the Florida Department of Transportation and the bridge openings schedule is determined by the United States Coast Guard. But Blouin said the town has lobbied the coast guard to limit the bridge openings during peak traffic periods, with some success.
Bridge openings are once per hour between 7:30 a.m. and 9 a.m. and once per hour between 4 p.m. and 6 p.m., he said. When President Trump is in town, the bridges open once per hour between 2:15 p.m. and 6 p.m. In the afternoon/evenings.
During non-peak travel periods, the bridges continue to open twice per hour as usual.
Blouin said the town has also been in talks with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers about limiting the number of weekday barge trips related to the Peanut Island sand dredging project, but with little success. The contractor’s goal is to conduct 12 barge trips daily (six each way) but that has been limited because of equipment problems, Blouin said. The bridge operators are required by law to open on demand for the barges.
For their part, residents were encouraged not to “block the box” at traffic intersections, and to keep their travel to a minimum during peak travel periods, such as after 3 p.m.
(Editor’s note: The Palm Beach Civic Association plans to release an additional article focusing on audience questions, and town staff answers, at Tuesday’s traffic forum.)
To receive Palm Beach TV, Our Town News, The Civic and more in your inbox sign up HERE.
Our Town sponsored by:
