Palm Coast Council Pushes for Pedestrian-Safety Crosswalks and Signs Near Lehigh Trail at Royal Palms

There will be more crosswalks, flashing lights and pedestrian-friendly signage at several busy intersections in Town Center in addition to recent stop-sign conversions. The Palm Coast City Council is directing the city administration to implement those changes to protect P-Section pedestrians and cyclists heading to or from the popular Lehigh Trail. 

“We have had an influx of residents over off of Point Pleasant in the Sabal Preserve there, and also down on Ponce de Leon near Point Pleasant,” Candace Stevens, a P-Section resident, told the council Monday evening. She was referring to two substantial new developments–a gated community on Ponce de Leon and Point Pleasant, and a large subdivision along the east end of Royal Palms Parkway called Sabal Preserve. 

“It is almost impossible to get across the street to Royal Palms to enjoy Lehigh Trail, which is why I bought my house,” Stevens said. “Pony Express, Porcupine, Point Pleasant, constantly on all those streets over there, we all pretty much bought over there because we wanted to be close to the trails and we’re really unable to use them safely. It’s really, really hard to get across the street.” Stevens asked for a flashing crosswalk at Point Pleasant and Royal Palms, which has become one of the busier intersections with only a stop sign for Point Pleasant traffic heading into Royal Palms. 

For pedestrians, the only way to stay on a footpath is to cross Royal Palms, the footpath being on the south side of the parkway only. Stevens suggested a crosswalk there, as well as near Imagine School at Town Center. 

“Ms. Stevens is spot on for all those areas that she mentioned,” Council member Charles Gambaro said, having himself witnessed the risks along those roads. “We need to do more than just look into it. Maybe we look into it as part of our budget process.” 

The crosswalk light at Town Center Boulevard and Old Kings Road was removed last weekend (or covered up) after the intersection was converted to a three-way stop, and the traffic light removed. The city’s traffic engineer told the council in April that the change would allow for smoother traffic flow. Council member Theresa Pontieri wants a safe way for pedestrians to cross at that intersection, which is immediately next to a makeshift parking area for the Lehigh Trail. 

There cannot be a flashing light for pedestrians in addition to red flashing lights at intersections, Carl Cote, the city’s director of engineering, said. But non-flashing signs alerting drivers that pedestrians have the right-of-way at stop signs may be installed. 

“We do have those, like on our arterials in the city,” Cote said. “We definitely can look at signage or different things we can do there to enhance the safety.”

Council members fear that the new stop signs at Royal Palms and Town Center and at Old Kings and Town Center haven’t stopped drivers from blowing through and striking a pedestrian or a cyclist. 

“We have been monitoring it,” Cote said of the traffic patterns implemented over the July 4 weekend. “We have worked with the sheriff’s office in doing some additional enforcement, and just trying to make sure people are behaving properly at those stops is typical of the right turns. People aren’t coming to a complete stop all the time. But the current findings that they’ve noticed so far is that it is working as designed. It usually takes a few weeks from people driving a similar route before they really get used to the change.” There have been no crashes at the intersections, he said. 

Pedestrian fatalities have been rising sharply since 2009, peaking at 7,500 across the country in 2022 before declining some since, with Florida ranking as the fifth-most dangerous states for pedestrians in fatalities per 100,000 people. The increasing number and size of large pick-up trucks and SUVs on roads is partly to blame, reversing over two decades of declining pedestrian deaths. “After analyzing federal and industry records, including never-before-examined data on vehicle dimensions, we found that the rise of large pickups and S.U.V.s is an important factor,” a team of writers reported in The New York Times in late June. “Our estimate is that about 200 to 400 pedestrians a year would not have died if vehicles had remained approximately the same size over the past quarter-century. That represents about 10 percent of the recent increase in pedestrian deaths.”

Flagler County roads have been the scene of 55 pedestrian and bicycle crashes with vehicles so far this year, with three fatalities involving pedestrians or cyclists. Last year one pedestrian was killed. The year before, five pedestrians and one cyclist lost their life in traffic crashes, according to the Florida Highway Patrol.