ST. LUCIE COUNTY, FL — St. Lucie County’s plan to overhaul a busy stretch of Prima Vista Boulevard is nearly finished on paper. County officials say the redesign is meant to cut crashes on a road that is close to hitting its traffic limit.
County Engineer Dan Zrallack said the design is about 90 percent complete. Engineers can still make changes based on public feedback.
“We are currently at 90 percent plans, so we are almost to the end, but we still have the ability to make some changes and improvements,” Zrallack said.
The project covers Prima Vista Boulevard from Airoso Boulevard to U.S. 1. Today the road is four lanes with a shared center turn lane. Drivers heading in opposite directions use that lane to turn left.
Zrallack said the lane is commonly known by a blunt nickname.
“It’s commonly referred to as like a suicide lane, so you have opposing turning movements down the middle of the roadway.”
The county plans to replace the shared lane with raised medians. Left turns would be allowed only at set points, spaced far enough apart that turning vehicles don’t back up into traffic.
“Instead of like a free-for-all where you can turn left anytime, anywhere, you are going to be restricted to turning where we set those points at,” Zrallack said. “The idea is to reduce the conflict movements and protect both drivers and pedestrians along the roadway.”
Zrallack said the county looked at crash data from 2019 through 2023. It shows an average of 111 reported crashes per year on the corridor. “Which is pretty high, and the traffic is not getting better,” he said.
Traffic counts taken for the project found about 25,500 vehicles a day on the road. Zrallack said the roadway can handle up to about 27,000. By 2035, he said, projected traffic would push it past capacity.
He said similar projects have been shown to lower crashes significantly. “The number of accidents can be reduced by like up to like 40 percent or more.”
Zrallack acknowledged the plan will be unpopular with some who live and work along the road. Many driveways line the corridor, and the medians will limit where drivers can turn in and out.
“We know these are not popular projects, right? We are restricting access to people’s driveways,” he said. “We understand that, but we have a duty to kind of protect the people traveling along that roadway.”
He said the road serves a wider area than the neighborhoods beside it. “This is a major corridor between US 1 all the way out to I-95, so people are going to use it. Not diminishing the people that live along this roadway, but you have to understand that traffic is not getting better, and we have to do what we can to protect everybody.”
The county held public meetings in April and again last week. Zrallack said the next public hearing will come when staff bring the final plans to the Board of County Commissioners for acceptance. He said that presentation is scheduled for February.
The project is still in design. Zrallack said the county has no construction timeline or budget yet.
“We don’t have a date set,” he said.