PALM BEACH, Fla. — To those who live there, the concept of traffic on Palm Beach is an everyday frustration.
It's something that town officials are aware of and are working to fix through a variety of different possibilities. All presented at a town council meeting on Tuesday.
Traffic on the island is getting worse as the days and years go on.
“It’s horrendous,” said Palm Beach resident Amber Grow. “It’s changed the entire way that I live my life.”
Grow has lived on Palm Beach her whole life, and year after year, there's more and more traffic in the mornings while taking her child to school in West Palm Beach.
“Which is 12 minutes, and then to get back home on the north end of the island, it takes me about 45 every day,” said Grow.
“We’re all in this together — staff, council and the community,” said Town Manager Kirk Blouin.
In a three-page spreadsheet, Blouin presented nearly 30 potential solutions to mitigate traffic around the island.
The consensus from council is that construction and landscaping coming on and off the island were a big cause of traffic. They also cited snowbirds coming back in town and the ever-growing traffic concern that President-elect Trump poses.
Blouin says they’ve even asked the Secret Service to build a bomb-proof wall around Mar-a-Lago to open more lanes of traffic deemed too close to the so-called Winter White House.
“His response was honest and very similar to mine,” said Blouin. “’I’m not an engineer but we’ll send my engineers down here to look at other options other than the blockade. It didn’t seem very positive because that location is very close to Mar-a-Lago.”
Some ideas that council seemed ready to move forward on are expanding the island's paid parking program, hiring employees to assist with bringing down traffic and changing the start times for construction and landscaping, among other ideas that will be voted on in meetings to come.
Grow said she’s glad the council is taking the situation this seriously. WPTV's Michael Hoffman asked her if she would forego a little bit of peace in the morning in order to have peace behind the wheel.
“I have a three-year-old, so peace in the morning is a foreign concept to me,” said Grow. “But, yes, I'm in favor of that.”
Officials say today's plans are not set in stone and they are on a trial basis.
