STUART — Martin County officials are raising alarms about a dangerous stretch of State Road 710, where decades of crashes and fatalities have prompted renewed calls for both immediate safety measures and long-term improvements.
During a presentation to the Martin County Board of County Commissioners on March 24, sheriff’s officials outlined the scope of the problem, pointing to years of deadly incidents along the corridor connecting Indiantown and Okeechobee.
“Basically, for the last 10 years, we've had three deaths a year out there. That's a lot of people dying in Martin County,” Budensiek said.
The sheriff’s office highlighted crash data showing the frequency and severity of incidents along the roughly 33-mile stretch of roadway.
“Since 2015, the 33.7 miles stretch of 710 between Warfield and Martin County and Okeechobee has experienced over 1,250 reported motor vehicle crashes,” he said. “In the last 10 years, 710 within Martin County and Okeechobee have experienced a total of 31 fatal motor vehicle crashes. These crashes have resulted in the deaths of 39 people. Twenty-nine of those deaths are ours.”
Officials described the road as ill-equipped to handle current traffic levels, particularly as development and regional growth increase the number of vehicles traveling through the area.
“The road for the amount of traffic that's coming through Indiantown and Western Martin County is just too small and narrow for the congestion that we have. If anything goes wrong, there's nowhere to go,” he said.
Many of the crashes involve large vehicles, compounding the danger for drivers.
“Most of these crashes that you're going to see involve heavier vehicles, semis, dump trucks,” he said. “It really is a death funnel if you're going down there and something goes wrong.”
Authorities also pointed to common causes behind the crashes, including risky passing maneuvers and hazardous weather conditions.
“The most common contributing causes to these crashes are, of these crashes, 20 were crossover crashes,” he said. “People passing, people trying to avoid slower traffic and they move over in the oncoming lane or [there’s] fog and rainstorms and they hydroplane.”
Traffic patterns in the area have shifted significantly in recent years, further straining the roadway.
“This road has been a problem for a long time, but with GPS coming online, there's a whole lot more traffic coming through Indiantown than used to in the past,” he said. “With Terra Largo coming online, there's some large building projects that are going on in Okeechobee County, the traffic is just all day, every day moving through there. It's not like little Indiantown used to be even 15 years ago.”
Despite enforcement efforts, officials said the risks remain high for both drivers and deputies conducting traffic stops.
“Last year, we wrote 2,781 citations right here on this section of road. So we're writing a lot of citations,” he said. “But it's dangerous for our deputies out there, too. You can see the guardrail that's there. You see our car hanging out in the road. You see the cars that have to avoid our traffic stop. So it's dangerous really for everybody.”
Some improvements have already demonstrated safety benefits. Officials pointed to a previously completed segment south of the Big John Monahan Bridge as an example.
“Since that piece was completed in 2017, we've had zero fatality crashes south of the Big John Monahan Bridge. [It] highlights how the design of the road has prevented these crashes,” he said. “It's not that we don't have crashes down there, but they're not those nasty head-on crashes where people are dead right there.”
Still, major upgrades to the rest of the corridor remain years away. County Public Works Director Jim Gorton outlined the timeline for the project, which includes multiple phases stretching into the next decade.
“The right-of-way phase starts in fiscal year 2027, which is July of this year, which means they have to acquire quite a bit of land to be able to widen the roadway. They're going to go through that process. It's usually about a two-year process, which is pushing out the start date of the project to 2029,” Gorton said. “The first project is the County Road 714 realignment. That's in fiscal year 2029. And then the next phase is the Martin Okeechobee County line up to 126th Boulevard, which is in Okeechobee County, that's in 2030. And then the two projects in Martin County are in 2031, as currently planned.”
Gorton added that the project has secured funding and is moving forward through the design process.
“It's fully funded. So the Martin County MPO and this board prioritized the project, and this past year, DOT fully funded all phases of this project, and they're all being actively designed right now,” Gorton said.
With construction still several years away, some commissioners are calling for interim solutions to improve safety in the meantime.
“We need to have some type of a short-term Band-Aid as we wait for FDOT as fast as they could possibly do. It's still going to be a couple of years,” said Commissioner Edward Ciampi.
Gorton said he will work with the Florida Department of Transportation to explore temporary measures, including additional signage, lighting and lane delineators aimed at reducing dangerous passing.