The Palm Valley Community Association held a special meeting on Monday, Oct. 8 at the Palm Valley Community Center to discuss traffic conditions on Roscoe Boulevard and the Ponte Vedra/Palm Valley area in general.
The meeting was attended by local residents, incoming County Commissioner Jeremiah Blocker and a representative of the St. Johns County Sheriff’s Office.
Roscoe Boulevard resident Greg Leonard, a member of the Citizens Traffic Task Force (CTTF), opened the meeting by analyzing traffic counts in the area and explaining the numbers to concerned citizens. He said alleviating the community’s traffic problems will be a difficult task for local officials and residents alike.
"Each year the county does daily traffic counts along stretches of road through our community," he said. "That information is available to the public. We have been building a grid of how those daily counts have been changing."
Regarding Roscoe Boulevard, Leonard said there has been a 50 percent increase in traffic since 2018.
"The only reason Roscoe really grew is because people were using Roscoe as a way to get around a cut through to avoid Palm Valley Road to avoid A1A," Leonard asserted. "I can't imagine there's a single person in this room that hasn't come up with a creative get around to move around our larger community."
According to a document Leonard shared at the meeting, traffic numbers along a section of Palm Valley Road from the Palm Valley Bridge going eastbound has skyrocketed over the last eight years.
"In 2010 we had 13,240 trips a day along that road," Leonard revealed. "That number is now almost 23,000 on that stretch going one day — that's a 74 percent increase."
Following Leonard's analysis of the latest traffic data, various residents shared their concerns at the meeting and offered possible solutions — from tolls to roundabouts.
Sharon Grant, an Odom’s Mill resident, said the blossoming of Ponte Vedra has made it more difficult to drive her son to school.
"I sit at the entrance and exit to my neighborhood for seven minutes in the morning waiting to get out onto Palm Valley," she said. "I have gone out across the bridge to take my son at rush hour to a doctor's appointment over on Old St. Augustine Road; the traffic on Nocatee Parkway headed toward the bridge was backed up 5 miles and it is every time I go."
Grant suggested putting in traffic circles on Palm Valley Road to lighten traffic at all the entrances to large neighborhoods.
"If we had small circles that just allowed people to flow out onto the road but slow the people on Palm Valley down a little bit, we may be able to keep the traffic moving a little bit more," she said. "It's just a thought."
Joe Gallagher, a Roscoe Boulevard resident, said people are driving too fast on Roscoe and illegally passing school buses — leading to dangerous driving conditions that could put his daughter at risk.
"My biggest concern is my daughter," he said. "Last year, we called the county and we had a police officer go (to Palm Valley Bridge) and he had somebody pulled over for passing that school bus. That's my concern."
