St. Petersburg continues bike lane project

ST. PETERSBURG (FOX 13) - A Wall Street Journal report last year found the Tampa Bay area, more specifically Pinellas County, as the deadliest place to ride a bike because of the high number of accidents involving bikes. 

St. Pete has noticed the numbers and continues their project to add more bike lanes.

“As we’ve put in more bike lanes, the average number of fatalities has gone down,” said Evan Mory, the parking and transportation director for St. Petersburg. 

Some residents like David Delrahim, president of the Shore Acres Neighborhood Association, are frustrated over the city’s plans to remove one lane of traffic to make way for a bike lane on 16th Street. 
Delrahim says when the city removed a lane on Martin Luther King Jr. Street to make room for a bike lane, traffic for motorists on MLK saw a major slowdown. 

“There’s just so much going on and personally I don’t think it’s the right move,” Delrahim said.  “My concern is slowing down traffic when we have the lanes to keep traffic moving.”

Mory says the data city leaders have seen indicates traffic moves smoothly on MLK and calls the bike lanes an important safety measure. 

St. Pete plans to add eight miles of bike lanes in 2019, along with 30 miles over the next decade.