Cervantes Street — Pensapedia, the Pensacola encyclopedia

Pedestrians struck by vehicle on Cervantes Street | WEAR

Crews installing lights on Cervantes Street after hit-and-run deaths

1806 E Cervantes St, Pensacola, FL 32501 | Zillow

UPDATE: Victim, suspect identified in accident on Cervantes Street

So how did we end up with such a deadly street, and how long before it’s fixed? The good news is that finally, the first steps have been taken.

Unveiling some preliminary design options in July, the Florida Department of Transportation is in the information gathering stages of what will result in an estimated $7.5 million enhancement to the nearly 2.5 mile stretch of Cervantes west of A Street.

Two options were presented, and both are marked improvements over the current conditions of the street. The addition of narrowed drive lanes, a landscaped median with additional pedestrian crosswalks, and widened sidewalks show great efforts to improve the safety of the street. There’s one element being proposed, however, that is creating some concern.

While depicted in some renderings and not others, a closer look at the above rendering reveals a wall separating the lanes of traffic and corralling the pedestrians towards the mid-block cross walk. Gone are the lush green medians that would serve a similar purpose — instead iron bars are used to block pedestrians from crossing randomly. To drive the point home, a similar slide conveys the dangers of the current conditions, albeit hyperbolically.

Virtually everyone would admit that the rendering with the Wall is a safer alternative, but this isn’t a problem with a binary solution. It’s not simply, “This or That.” There are many more tools to address the issues facing Cervantes Street, and it will take a combination of solutions to address them. The Wall feels like a shortcut, where instead of making Cervantes a safe street for pedestrians and a vibrant one for the surrounding community, government is stepping in to protect pedestrians from themselves and further prioritizing vehicular traffic.

Of course, this isn’t the first time an FDOT project has deployed the Wall. Tennessee Street in Tallahassee is cited as an example of a comparable street and success story, but as a former resident of Tallahassee, I must say that Tennessee Street is not the kind of street that Cervantes should aspire to be, and it’s not that kind of street that a neighborhood like Brownsville deserves.

Tennessee Street and Cervantes likely have similar origin stories — heavily commercial roadways that served as connectors before the development of the Interstate system. Over time, they became wider and wider until we ended up with the too-damn-wide roads we have today. Their paths diverged though, as Tennessee Street would become a gateway for Florida State University with an Average Annual Daily Traffic Count of over 40,000, while Cervantes Street has half that with 20,000 AADT. When analyzed this way, it’s not really an apt comparison. So is the Wall really the right solution?

One need not travel far in Tallahassee to find a street that is a much better sister street to Cervantes. Gaines Street, just south of campus, has completely transformed the surrounding area in recent years. It is a shining example of what can happen when pedestrians receive just as much priority as vehicles, and it’s AADT is just over 21,000, much closer the level of traffic Cervantes experiences on a day-to-day basis.

Going from four lanes down to two, a largely vacant and underutilized commercial corridor was activated once traffic was slowed, and amenities such as wider sidewalks and streets were added. The results have been incredible as over a hundred million dollars in private development has occurred along Gaines Street since the improvement, and continues to occur. Not only is Gaines Street a safer street, it’s also a much more desirable street for businesses and residents.

So what message does it send to a community when you build a wall through the middle of it? For decades, Cervantes has told drivers that the surrounding community is just a place to pass through, and we’ve made it efficient and easy for drivers to do that. What if we took a different approach, and designed a street that accommodated people as much as cars? One that slowed down traffic, increased pedestrian safety, and beautified this stretch of the community? What would it mean for the business community who has already started to band together and focus on revitalization? What would it mean to life-long residents waiting for an answer to the countless deaths they’ve seen? It makes one wonder: why is a wall the best solution when, in truth, the roads are just too damn wide?

The deadline for written comment is Tuesday, August 27 and a formal public hearing will be scheduled for this fall. Construction on the $7.5 million project is expected to begin in the fall 2020. Additional information can be found on the project page on the Florida Department of Transportation’s website.

The roads are too damn wide! was originally published in plvsvltra on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.