People say the road diet has led to heavy traffic and fender benders, adding that it’s unfinished and unsightly.
There’s a different kind of road rage boiling up in Lakeland.
People are growing tired of waiting for the city and the Florida Department of Transportation to do something about Florida Avenue in Lakeland’s Dixieland neighborhood.
That’s where a three-year road diet experiment, slowing traffic and reducing lanes, has left people starved — for answers.
“They keep talking about it, but get it done, move forward,” Mark Blanchard, who walks along Florida Avenue just about every day, said.
Blanchard says he feels safer with the lane reductions and concrete curbs. But he’s also less comfortable with the traffic that now backs up.
He’s not alone.
A lot of people shared similar concerns at a sometimes-heated meeting on Monday between the city of Lakeland and FDOT.
People say the road diet has led to heavy traffic and fender benders, adding that it’s unfinished and unsightly.
“The problem is we really haven’t done anything for 24 months. That’s really the problem,” Mayor Bill Mutz said. “While everyone was feeling like things were progressing, we weren’t doing anything. That’s sobering.”
“I feel like we’ve been taken to the prom and left at the doorstep without a corsage,” City Commissioner Guy Lalonde said, describing how the city feels about the project — and now FDOT’s suggestion that Lakeland chip in to finish it.
Florida Avenue is a state road. Still, FDOT Secretary L.K. Nandam made it clear resurfacing and expansion projects have become much more expensive. And if Lakeland wants the Florida Avenue project to move forward, the city is going to have to pony up part of the cost.
“It will be sometime in the future. Sometime in the long-term feature for us to even pursue this,” Nandam said. “So, a partnership is going to be very, very critical for us to advance this project.”
How much money and who pays what share can’t be known until an engineering and design study is complete, which could take two years alone.
The FDOT has set aside $1.5 million this budget year and next year toward South Florida Avenue’s reconstruction, Nandam said, with a larger sum of $6 million budgeted in 2026-27.
The roughly $9 million in funding from the FDOT is not anticipated to be anywhere near enough to completely redesign the Dixieland corridor. The cost of asphalt alone has increased by about 50% in recent years because of inflation, Nandam said.
City leaders have also been hearing from people in nearby neighborhoods who say impatient drivers cut through their once-quiet streets looking for detours.
“There’s been lots of traffic and tons of people pulling into my neighborhood when they don’t need to be there,” neighbor Grace Elizabeth said.
Businesses in the area say they also have not seen the promise of more biking and foot traffic come to pass either. But it might, they say, with long-awaited wider sidewalks and more inviting landscaping.
“Absolutely,” Tracy Wagner, owner of Tracy and Company Hair Designers, said. “For all the businesses. The pedestrians. And everyone in the community.”
“The short answer is no. We don’t have the money. We’re not sure where we are going to get the money,” Commissioner Bill Read said. “Everyone out here is experiencing everything we are. Florida Avenue is being inundated with traffic, people are shooting off into smaller roads, and we’re having to get speed bumps on every street. I think there’s more traffic, I think there’s more accidents, personally.”
Some estimates say it could take another 10 years to complete the project, a number many said is simply too long for such a busy road.
When asked about removing the barriers to re-widen the road, FDOT said it could do so, but that it would be at the city’s expense.
They also warned that while there have been more fender benders along Florida Avenue during the road diet, it would likely lead back to the days of more serious accidents along the road.
Secretary Nandam suggested the city try to approach private stakeholders who would benefit from the project and ask them to chip in as well.
“It will take time with South Florida Avenue,” Chuck Barmby, Lakeland’s planning and transportation manager said. “We are probably looking at a few years before permanent three-lane configuration is done because of the complexity of the corridor. There need to be other routes to handle traffic. That puts the earliest date for the state of reconstruction in approximately 2027”, Barmby said, if design work and funding come together.