ORLANDO, Fla. – Orlando leaders have looked for years on how they can improve safety along one of the city’s busiest roads.
Corrine Drive was originally built to move heavy equipment, like tanks, from the old Naval Training Center to US 17-92. That need is long gone now. Operations stopped at the base more than 30 years ago and Baldwin Park sits in its place.
Filled with dozens of hip, unique, and locally owned shops and restaurants, Audubon Park has turned into one of Orlando’s coolest neighborhoods.
“It’s so centrally located that you can go anywhere you want,” Gene Willard said. “Just as long as you can get through the traffic.”
Willard, who’s owned Willard Appliance since 1979, has watched the traffic along Corrine Drive worsen as the neighborhood’s popularity and population has boomed.
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In that time, though, he says very few improvements have been made to the road itself or its parking problem.
“People are parking across the street and walking across the road in the middle of the day, evenings, mornings,” Willard said. “Because you can’t find any parking.”
Meshing cars, community, and culture here is something the city of Orlando is working on.
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Just last year, a new signaled crosswalk was installed near the popular East End Market.
Juliette Wallens lives nearby and says she uses the crosswalk every day to take her kids to and from Audubon Park School.
“Before the crosswalk was there, we had to do the intersection bit,” Wallens said. “That can be a little dangerous because there’s just a lot of cars and traffic.”
The crosswalk is just the start of what’s expected to be a $20 million overhaul.
While still in the early planning phases, the city wants to put Corrine Drive on a diet – a road diet – squeezing and reducing lanes with safety in mind.
“When you have a large thoroughfare with four lanes and a turn lane, people tend to go as fast as their cars can go,” Commissioner Robert Stuart said. “Not as fast as the speed limit.”
Stuart says the design also includes adding more crosswalks, sidewalks, and biking lanes. In fact, temporary bike lanes were put in a few weeks ago with the goal of getting feedback from the community.
For Jeff Palmer, owner of Palmer’s Garden and Goods, that feedback will be negative.
“I’ve seen a couple of our customers run into it,” Palmer said. “I’ve seen some near misses with bikes and pedestrians. I’ve seen some interruptions in business operations where parking is a little more scarce. What I haven’t seen a lot of are people using it.”
Since the lanes replaced a number of parking spots near his garden center business, he says the new bike lanes are hurting his bottom line.
“I can definitely tell our sales are down since its installation,” Palmer said. “What I don’t like about the temporary things is when the real bike path gets put in, there will be other traffic-calming elements to it that will slow the traffic down. When you’re putting it in without those elements, it creates a dangerous situation.”
To help alleviate the parking situation, Stuart says the city is talking with the Orange County School Board to see if visitors can use the parking lot at Audubon Park School after school hours, which would provide 80 spaces.
The city is taking the Corrine Road project in phases. Construction could get underway in 2025 or 2026.
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