Public Safety 'Not Debatable,' Vice Mayor Says

The vice mayor called it “irresponsible” not to use a federal grant to put bike lanes on Pinehurst Road.

“The first kid that gets killed on that road because of a vote that I could have cast to simply say because it's busy — not to put a warning sign out there — would be horrible. ... We satisfied the grant criteria for the very reason that it's not safe” an impassioned Ron Barnette said during a recent workshop.

A Safe Routes to School grant from The Florida Department of Transportation would largely fund a proposed project for 4-foot bike lane extenstions on either side of Pinehurst Road, a major thoroughfare to .

The issue will be weighed at a city commission meeting at 6:30 p.m. Thursday at .

Proposed bike lanes were discussed during a Nov. 10 workshop after city staff presented survey results conducted earlier this year. All the input helped create Dunedin’s connectivity master plan, the city’s long-term vision for bicycle and pedestrian routes. Staff hustled the completion of the master plan so commissioners could decide .

About 20 people from the community attended. Many spoke on both sides of the Pinehurst bike lanes issue.

Neighbors vehemently shot down the city’s original plan in July (similar to the Pinellas Trail).

"On Michigan and Pinehurst, in particular, they are very narrow roads," resident and avid bicyclist Bill Francisco said. "I think that engineering and statistics would say that adding bike paths on either side gives those of us on the bicycles a little more chance because we're physically separated."

Commissioner Julie Ward Bujalski, who has school-age children, seemed skeptical that children would benefit from the lanes. She advocated for better lighting in key areas.

“I don’t see the kids using bike lanes,” Bujalski said. “But that’s the mom in me; that has nothing to with policies.”

Barnette said public safety was "not debatable" to him.

“I don’t want us to get bogged down in regional and local complaints about ‘not in my neighborhood',” he said. “For those who I know who ride bicycles all over town ... there are areas here that we need to mark, and we need to tell cars to be wary of these individuals.”

The mayor weighed the potential safety benefit for students and the city's longterm bicycle and pedestrian vision, which has an inherent economic benefit of attracting day-trippers to local businesses.

“We’ve been known as a pedestrian-friendly community,” Dave Eggers said. “Whatever we do, it's not ever going to be safe; it’s just relative degrees of safer.”

Commissioner Julie Scales spoke in favor of bike lanes on Pinehurst; David Carson spoke against adding the lanes. Carson, instead, favored widening sidewalks.