Scenic 30A and 395 Intersection in Seagrove Beach

As long as the circle is wide enough to accommodate eighteen-wheelers, and if the problem with the four driveways is resolved, and, most especially, if the bike path is moved to a location far enough from this intersection, it would seem to be a possibly adequate solution. I haven't yet heard details that would ease my reservations. My biggest concern is that the designers would assume that bicycle traffic would merge gracefully with vehicular traffic, and that just isn't going to happen. They can draw painted bike lanes all they want, but they can't educate the multitudes as to how to use them.

As long as the circle is wide enough to accommodate eighteen-wheelers, and if the problem with the four driveways is resolved, and, most especially, if the bike path is moved to a location far enough from this intersection, it would seem to be a possibly adequate solution. I haven't yet heard details that would ease my reservations. My biggest concern is that the designers would assume that bicycle traffic would merge gracefully with vehicular traffic, and that just isn't going to happen. They can draw painted bike lanes all they want, but they can't educate the multitudes as to how to use them.

Yep - big trucks have to be taken into account for sure. I think planners know what types of vehicles use the road. Why would you think that the bike path would be eliminated at that intersection?

As it is now I am always nervous and looking out for people on bikes there. So often people ride on through without stopping or dismounting. If you're headed west and turning north you can't see bikes. Drivers are focused on their turn and not looking for bikes.

There are specific guidelines from FDOT about how to build a roundabout - http://www.dot.state.fl.us/TrafficOperations/Doc_Library/PDF/roundabout_guide8_07.pdf
Professional engineers will design and oversee construction.

Here are your choices:
1. do nothing, traffic at the intersection gets worse every year.
2. add traffic light, delay during heavy traffic would increase.
3. build a roundabout.
4. reduce number of cars and traffic.

A roundabout may not be a perfect solution. A high volume of pedestrian and bike traffic requires special attention to design. The current intersection is plenty dangerous now for people on bike and on foot. The current intersection is also difficult for folks trying to get out of driveways, and pulling in and out from parking across from Seagrove Market.

I have used good roundabouts. The key is to make it large enough, and place crossovers for pedestrians well away from the circle. Having only three roads there is much better than having to deal with 4, and should mean the circle can be smaller.

Normally all bikes would share the circle but since we have our awesome bike path we'll route it around. Having it cross as far away from the circle as possible will be key.

Some circles can be elongated in one or more sections if there is room. We are lucky that it is a relatively safe, low-speed intersection. If it wasn't then we'd likely need a stoplight which would back traffic up further. Seagrove Market and V Seagrove make it extra challenging.

What about when Hotel Viridian is built? I heard they were going to have underground parking. That would seem to be a source of a lot of extra traffic getting onto and off 395. Have the traffic engineers and designers anticipated this?

I've wondered if the bike path could stay on the south side of 30A? I never understood why it was routed to the north side just past the old Wheelhouse site. That crossing has always been something of a challenge for cyclists and walkers to use and for drivers as well.

I've wondered if the bike path could stay on the south side of 30A? I never understood why it was routed to the north side just past the old Wheelhouse site. That crossing has always been something of a challenge for cyclists and walkers to use and for drivers as well.

My guess would be that when the Wheelhouse was there the parking was in front, perpendicular to the rest., and the cars would block any bikepath. That was always problematic since traffic had to stop so parked cars could back out onto 30a. with limited line of site given the extra large SUV's typical in the area.

It would be safer, IMO, to have the path stay on the south side, but I imagine there are other issues even now that there is no parking along that area. Every crossing creates its own set of hazards, but if, at the intersection of 395 and 30A, bikes and pedestrians were on the south side - there would be no waits to cross, no near misses because they wouldn't be crossing the street.

The bike path was moved to the north in that section, I think, mostly because the homeowners in that area, many of whom have owned their property since the fifties, have very little property left (especially after Dennis ate their south lawns away). It just seemed right to move it to the north to accommodate them and to tie into Seaside which had already constructed pedestrian facilities on north side.

I think the possibility of the bike path going through the roundabout would only work if the bike path was oriented as a separate "spoke", not a parallel "quasi-roadway" as it is now. Even then, the incredibly slow start it takes a bicycler to get going from a complete stop would present problems with them merging with the vehicular traffic. A roundabout only works if the traffic keeps flowing with relatively few complete stops. I would like to see the county contemplate moving the bike path away from this intersection, even if they don't proceed with the roundabout. It just seems like the smart thing to do.

I read the guidelines to building a roundabout from the link Kurt put up a couple posts back, and it contained exactly one paragraph on bicycle traffic. Here's the quote:

"4.14 BICYCLE AND PEDESTRIAN DESIGN CONSIDERATIONS
According to the Draft “Florida Bicycle Facilities Planning and Design Manual”, no special
markings or lanes are generally needed in the roundabout to accommodate the bicyclist. On
approaches which have bicycle lanes, the lane should end and permit a merge during the last 22 -
30 m of the approach. Although separate paths have been used in some high volume roundabouts,
that would be a special design feature."

I read this to mean that they want all bicycle traffic to merge with the vehicular traffic before entering the roundabout. I'm not sure this is even feasible, let alone, desirable.

I saw a passage in there about special care if it is a high traffic area for bikes and pedestrians but no specifics.

The part you quoted doesn't take into account paths like the Timpoochee Trail (bike path) which I see as a separate and special entity. For normal bike traffic on the road (spandex wearers), yes you would expect them to merge and follow all other rules of the road appropriate for bicycles.

If the county owns the vacant lot then I think it could be done right. Might even be able to move bike path to south side.

The county doesn't own the vacant lot, as far as I know. It would have to seize it from the Stephens family, but I thought I heard something, quite a while back, that they might be agreeable to it. If the design gave them more area on their gulf side properties, and an adequate way to access the circle, it might be a win-win.

I just have apprehensions about things looking good on paper, theoretically by the book, and being not all that practical in the real world. This seems like an extraordinarily important move by our County and Public Works Department that has had almost no public input and no details forthcoming from the County.

Whether you like it or not, SoWal has become the defacto news source for many of the residents of South Walton County. I seldom ever tune to Panama City local TV stations.They seem ever more irrelevant. Our newspapers are, shall we say, "sparse". It is a very invigorating thing to know I can find out, almost instantaneously, about very local events, and get feedback about these events, right away. I've got a lot of confidence that you will keep up well informed about this issue, and everything else. (Don't let it go to your head, and watch out for them Seminoles this year.)

Has the idea of Emminent Domain been floated I wonder?

The article in the Defuniak Herald said that the roundabout property needed would be 230 feet west of the intersection, 1000 feet east, and 230 feet north of it. It would need the vacant property in the northeast corner and would cost over a million dollars to build.
Doesn't that mean Veridian is in the area of the roundabout?

I understood it to mean it would need those dimensions to complete the approaches, which I took to mean the striping, and possibly, the merging of the bike path.(at least the 1000ft east part) Perhaps, this is taking into account a detouring of the bike path.If this thing is really encompassing that much land, it really will be a big deal.
The Viridian, very early on, offered to donate some of its land for this cause. I don't know if this happened or not.

I understood it to mean it would need those dimensions to complete the approaches, which I took to mean the striping, and possibly, the merging of the bike path.(at least the 1000ft east part) Perhaps, this is taking into account a detouring of the bike path.If this thing is really encompassing that much land, it really will be a big deal.
The Viridian, very early on, offered to donate some of its land for this cause. I don't know if this happened or not.

See my post #76 http://sowal.com/bb/showthread.php/28995-Scenic-30A-and-395-Intersection?p=771204#post771204. I measured it out on Goodle Earth.

I hate to be critical when I don't have a solution, but I don't really have an answer. We may be forced to have another access road from 30A to 98 or 30A to 395. The middle beach road makes no sense. I'd hate to lose property values if I lived on one of the streets on a Seagrove back road proposal. We may be forced to violate the state parks to get another route from 30A to 98 between 395 and Camp Creek. I really don't like that idea because the state parks are a special part of South Walton. But of all of the proposals, I think that's the best.

But the BCC has already voted on the roundabout. So I think we're wasting our time complaining at this point. I for one didn't attend the Planning Commissiona and BCC meetings, and I regret that.

Even if the bike path is moved south of 30A, there are a lot of people who live in neighborhoods on 395 who will have to cross the intersection on bikes to get to their closest beach access at the currect 30A/395. Have you been back to the Watersound development near Publix? There are some really nice homes in there, and a lot of building activity.

Quite often of late massive public outcry has changed items already voted on. Since we usually only find out about stuff after the vote, we cannot let the fact that it has been voted on stop us from discussing it. Better to critique before rather than after.

Would buying the NE corner property and making a right turn lane for those heading north on 395 from westbound 30a be a better solution?

That doesn't solve traffic on 395 trying to turn east onto 30-A, crossing 30-A traffic heading east. The way I see it, with a roundabout, 30-A traffic turning north on 395 would flow almost unimpeded,except for bicycle traffic headed east to west. I'm not sure why they haven't just tried to re-route the bike path and see if this doesn't improve the flow. What bothers me most about this thing is that 99% of the time, the existing system works just fine. It only backs up, severely, for maybe 30 minutes, on maybe a dozen days out of the year. This will be the most drastic thing to happen to 30-A since pavement...

It backs up much more than that, and it continues to get worse, so we should address it, but I think the issue is volume, which a roundabout won't fix. A right turn lane, getting rid of the V street parking spaces (that require traffic to stop), stopping parking on the edge of the road (which is dangerous because it completely blocks a driver's view of oncoming traffic ), and another connection between 30a and 98 east of 395 would be better solutions.

I am having a hard time dismissing this issue... it just occurred to me this morning that a roundabout of this size will completely devastate the grove of trees that inspired the naming of Seagrove... pause for a minute and let it sink in that we keep destroying the things that have made our community unique and beautiful... and, for what? to make it more comfortable for tourists to come down here?(Hint: if they can't wait for an extra ten minutes in traffic, then they can just go back to where they came from.)There just has to be a more moderate way to solve this problem, and other problems that face us because of unbridled growth. A middle beach road should have been planned many years ago, and I still think it needs to be done, rather than another devastating blow to the heart of Seagrove.

Me too. We seem to be forgetting why people love it here.

I don't think a middle beach road is the solution either, as it doesn't make sense geographically.

IMO we should be making it easier to use 98 to move east and west when traveling longer distances on 30a and finding solutions (like a 30A shuttle) that reduce the number of cars on the road.

I am having a hard time dismissing this issue... it just occurred to me this morning that a roundabout of this size will completely devastate the grove of trees that inspired the naming of Seagrove... pause for a minute and let it sink in that we keep destroying the things that have made our community unique and beautiful... and, for what? to make it more comfortable for tourists to come down here?(Hint: if they can't wait for an extra ten minutes in traffic, then they can just go back to where they came from.)There just has to be a more moderate way to solve this problem, and other problems that face us because of unbridled growth. A middle beach road should have been planned many years ago, and I still think it needs to be done, rather than another devastating blow to the heart of Seagrove.

I'm going to disagree. First, the trees (I assume you mean the ones on the northeast corner). Eventually someone will build on that lot and take out at least as many trees as are needed for the footprint.
If you want to talk about impacts to the things that make our community unique, you cannot ignore the fact that either a middle beach road or another connector to 98 will be a huge impact on the state forest. In my opinion it would open the door for the end of the state forest south of 98. If you think we have density and infrastructure issues now, give some thought to what that would look like.
Even with 'only' roads, wetlands that naturally clean water that eventually ends up in the gulf and many plant and animal species would be greatly disturbed.
And any road through the forest will not be cheap. There is no route that would not require numerous wetland crossings. You can get an idea about this from aerials, but if you can't pick out the wetlands that way, just talk to anyone who has extensively hiked or biked through those forest trails.
Overall I think more roads would be far more destructive.

You have a good point. I guess I have a somewhat jaded attitude that the absolutely unique natural environment of Seagrove, with it's huge majestic live oaks and magnificent magnolias growing just steps away from the beautiful emerald waters of the Gulf of Mexico is of, at least, equal value than a stretch of pine trees and wetlands, just like a million miles of swampy forest throughout the south.I am an environmentalist and I understand your concern for not touching the state forests. I guess, at this point, I am saying, don't build anything more.

I scanned a little bit more of the roundabout guidelines from above and there is a emphasis on visibility and sightlines when building a roundabout. Between that, and the huge amount of utilities that will be rerouted through this construction sight, I just don't see anything of "seagrove" surviving. It will look a lot more like a parking lot than it will look like a park.

Yeah, I sound like an alarmist and a luddite. It just seems like a hell of a risk to take to make a bunch of tourists comfortable for two weeks out of the year.

I hope they are smart enough to route the bicycles north of the circle and not allow them access! Make a separate bike crossing north of the circle - Oh wait, that means a bike crossing before the circle!

I read the guidelines to building a roundabout from the link Kurt put up a couple posts back, and it contained exactly one paragraph on bicycle traffic. Here's the quote:

"4.14 BICYCLE AND PEDESTRIAN DESIGN CONSIDERATIONS
According to the Draft “Florida Bicycle Facilities Planning and Design Manual”, no special
markings or lanes are generally needed in the roundabout to accommodate the bicyclist. On
approaches which have bicycle lanes, the lane should end and permit a merge during the last 22 -
30 m of the approach. Although separate paths have been used in some high volume roundabouts,
that would be a special design feature."

I read this to mean that they want all bicycle traffic to merge with the vehicular traffic before entering the roundabout. I'm not sure this is even feasible, let alone, desirable.

This makes it sound like the merging process should not be too difficult: http://www.bicyclinginfo.org/faqs/answer.cfm?id=3454