"Bryant,
Monday, April 18, 2022
Sorrento Road Needs to be FIXED! Part I: I Heard You Loud and Clear
And I have heard from many constituents since then all saying the same thing: Sorrento Road is dangerous, dilapidated, and insufficient to handle the traffic it currently has--FIX IT!
Sorrento Road is the name of state road 292 that leads from Blue Angel over into Perdido--becoming Perdido Key Drive at the intersection of Sorrento, Gulf Beach Highway, and Perdido Key Drive.
It is a road that is travelled frequently by locals and visitors alike--and it is a road that has a series of tremendous car collissions, including several fatal ones, over the last decade and a half.
At one point from 2011-2014--there was a real possibility of 4 laning Sorrento Road as the part of a larger project to provide a four lane evacuation route from Perdido Key Drive, through Sorrento Road, to Blue Angel, and ultimately out of Escambia County headed East. That project did not come to fruition and was all but killed upon the changing of Leadership in Escambia's District 2 in 2014.
Meanwhile, the project to improve and 4 lane Sorrento Road has languished far down the priorities rankings on the Florida Alabama Transportation Planning Organization's (TPO) priorities list.
So I told the audience at the town hall and others who have contacted me about Sorrento Road that now that it is within District 1 and I can lobby for this to be done as the commissioner representing this area and I understand the pressing nature of getting this road enhanced for safety--I am going to work as hard as I am able to get this bumped up on the priority list at the TPO so that this state road can be improved and the carnage on this roadway can end.
At last week's TPO meeting - we had a robust discussion with the panel as well as with FDOT's Bryant Paulk--culminating in my request for a formal safety audint of this state road by FDOT. The below email was sent after the meeting by county roads division director Chris Phillips to Mr. Paulk:
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5 comments:
I never understood how just one d2 dingleberry could kill that entire project in 2014.
So this is another attempt to blame the D2 commissioner for something all five have been ignoring. Nothing here says there is a plan to fix anything.
7:09--Just look at the history of the effort to develop the 4-lane all the way out of the county for an evacuation route and what happened when there was a leadership change in 2014-2015. Different vision, different direction, and that project evanesced. Because elections have consequences for projects that have long completion timelines. Meanwhile, 12:21--what happened at the TPO is in fact the first part of a long slog process in getting Sorrento road appropriately prioritized on the TPO priorities list, where it had been languishing far down the rankings. It is getting the attention now it deserves, so stay tuned and watch it move up. Now, understand it's not an overnight fix--it takes years and years. But this is the start.
Serious question. How do you "fix a road" to save lives when the majority of the accidents are caused by careless/drunk/distracted/inexperienced and/or inept drivers?
Alice Hurst Neal--Fair question--one that I have asked as well. No matter how well we engineer a road if someone drives dangerously or impaired or distracted---none of the safety features matter and there are still tragic consequences. But Sorrento in particular seems, for a variety of reasons, to have more than its fair share of fatal wrecks. Look at all the wood crosses on the ROW as you drive this road. So, like we did at Cervantes, we need to have the engineers look at Sorrento and provide the safety audit, and the previous ones, and lets see what they come back with. Perhaps more lighting? better shoulders? who knows. 4 lanes will take years to accomplish because this road was de-prioritized after 2014. But it is back in the spotlight, it is getting prioritized now. It needs it.
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