For now, the tortoise is winning the race in Holmes Beach.
The Florida Department of Transportation, which has the authority to prohibit the use of low-speed vehicles on state roads in the interest of safety, is coordinating with Holmes Beach to determine if low-speed vehicles are appropriate on state roads, according to a Feb. 22 email to The Islander from Andy Orrell, DOT District 1 director of communications.
In an October 2021 email, former DOT community liaison Jesten Abraham told Holmes Beach Commissioner Jayne Christenson low-speed vehicles were not allowed on state roads, which in Holmes Beach includes State Road 64/Manatee Avenue and State Road 789/East Bay Drive.
Soon after, the Holmes Beach Police Department, which had received complaints about LSVs crossing the Anna Maria Island Bridge on Manatee Avenue, placed a sign on Manatee Avenue reading: “No golf carts or LSV on Manatee Avenue, East Bay Drive” and began enforcing the restrictions.
However, at a Feb. 14 Island Transportation Planning Organization meeting in Holmes Beach, current DOT liaison Tanya Merkle appeared to contradict her predecessor when she said the department defers to state statutes and local ordinances regarding the prohibition of LSVs on state roads.
Orrell confirmed Merkle’s statement in the Feb. 22 email to The Islander: “After evaluating Florida Statute 316.2122 … the Florida Department of Transportation, District 1, interprets that low-speed vehicles, as defined in the statute, are permitted on state roads with a posted speed limit of 35 mph or lower.”
The posted limits are 35 mph on Manatee Avenue and East Bay Drive within Holmes Beach and the municipality has no restrictions on LSVs.
LSVs are defined by state statutes as:
- Able to travel 20-25 mph on level ground;
- Must be registered, titled and insured;
- Must be equipped with safety accessories, including headlamps and turn signals.
On Feb. 25, HBPD moved the prohibitive sign, changed its message and lifted the LSV restrictions pending the results of a DOT study into the safety of operating the vehicles on the roads.
As of The Islander’s press time, the DOT had not replied to a Feb. 23 inquiry about the nature or time frame of the department’s safety study.
“They’re in the middle of doing their own study,” HBPD Chief Bill Tokajer said. “But I still think that, first, if a low-speed vehicle is only allowed to be traveling at no more than 25 mph from the manufacturer, I don’t know why you would ever allow it to be on a road that’s 35.”
“Beyond that, the speed limit as you get off the bridge (on Perico Island) is immediately 45. So I don’t see them allowing low-speed vehicles to go across a bridge where it can get to the end of the bridge and has nowhere else to go,” he said.
As for State Road 789/East Bay Drive/Gulf Drive, Tokajer, who serves as Holmes Beach’s traffic safety engineer, said he asked the DOT to consider reducing the speed limit on the road from 35 mph to 25 mph within city limits.
The city recently reduced the speed on its 35-mph roadways to 25 mph and Tokajer said the reduction “would allow low-speed vehicles to go through our city at 25 mph from tip to tip.”
The chief said the reduction could satisfy safety advocates, such as himself, who have been pushing for slower roads, and those who want to operate their LSVs on East Bay Drive.
Slower roads are safer because vehicles traveling at slower speeds can stop more quickly, Tokajer said.
A reduced speed limit would improve safety for the occupants of LSVs, who share the road with drivers of much larger vehicles, and eliminate scenarios where automobile drivers find themselves behind LSVs moving 10 miles under the speed limit on East Bay Drive, he said.
Holmes Beach resident Stuart Bardwell, an LSV owner who prompted Merkle to clarify the DOT’s stance on the vehicles at the February ITPO meeting, said Feb. 22 that while he would not oppose a speed limit reduction on East Bay Drive, the measure would set Holmes Beach apart from Bradenton Beach.
“Yes, I would agree that, if everyone’s doing the same speed, everything’s fine. No one’s getting frustrated,” he said. “But, again, you get to Bradenton Beach, it starts out it’s 35 and it gets to that curve and it’s 25. And it’s 25 in town and then it speeds up to 35 by Coquina Beach. So, where does that argument stand?” Bardwell said.
“If all the other barrier island towns operate the same way, are you really willing to say that you’re, no pun intended, going to be an island on this issue?” he asked.
Speed limits going south on State Road 789 from Holmes Beach through Bradenton Beach vary between 25 mph and 35 mph and Bradenton Beach permits the use of LSVs on Gulf Drive.
However, the vehicles are prohibited on stretches of State Road 789/Gulf of Mexico Drive on Longboat Key, where the speed limit is 45 mph.
A matter of safety
Christenson, the only Holmes Beach commissioner to vote against the city’s recent speed limit reduction, told The Islander Feb. 23 that reducing the speed on East Bay Drive is unnecessary.
“I just haven’t seen that speed has created an unsafe environment,” Christenson said. “Yes, there was a fatality, but that was due to a DUI and a person driving that shouldn’t be driving.”
In February 2021, an 83-year-old pedestrian was killed by a hit-and-run driver in an SUV around the 2700 block of Gulf Drive in Holmes Beach.
The driver later turned herself in to authorities and was charged with leaving the scene of a crash, a first-degree felony.
In a Feb. 23 email to the Holmes Beach City Commission following a Feb. 22 commission meeting, Tokajer said the speed of the vehicle in the hit-and-run was one of many factors.
In general, pedestrians struck by vehicles traveling 25 mph as opposed to 35 mph have a better survival rate, he said.
“If this pedestrian was a family member of mine who was involved in a crash, I would much prefer they were on a lower speed road,” he said.
The last major LSV crash in Holmes Beach occurred Nov. 29, 2021, when a sedan struck a golf cart in the 6800 block of Palm Drive.
As of Feb. 14, the driver of the golf cart, Jana Samuels, 79, of Anna Maria, remained in the intensive care unit at Blake Medical Center in Bradenton.
On Feb. 25, the HBPD responded to calls about an LSV that rolled over near the 6600 block of Palm Drive. No one was injured in the accident.
Bradenton Beach Police Chief John Cosby told The Islander Feb. 23 that LSV crashes were infrequent and he couldn’t remember the last time his department responded to a crash involving an LSV.
In his email to the Holmes Beach Commission, Tokajer said reducing the speed on East Bay/Gulf Drive within the city is not solely related to safety issues posed by slow-moving golf carts or LSVs.
“I know the discussion of speed limits came up during the golf cart/LSV discussion but the speed limit does not have to do with how many golf cart crashes we have had, it is a global safety issue for the island and all modes of travel,” he said.
“We have so many people crossing the street in and out of crosswalks. We have the trolley stops. We have pedestrian traffic walking down the sides of the road and we have bicycle traffic,” Tokajer told The Islander Feb. 23. “Everybody is sharing the same road, which is a narrow road, and it just makes sense to slow down all vehicular traffic.”