Ask Silvia Garcia about her former commute in the DC area, and she laughs. “Horrible. That’s why we left.”
The commute from Port St. Lucie to West Palm Beach is much better, Garcia says.
Now the Florida Department of Transportation wants to know where Garcia, and thousands of others people who live on the Treasure Coast are going every day and how they get from point A to point B. Next week, FDOT will send out 60,000 letters to randomly chosen Treasure Coast households, asking them to take part in a travel survey.
“Where you go. How do you get there? What routes do you take? What time of the day do you travel? says public information director Barbara Kelleher.
FDOT says the goal is to share the info with local planners to better shape the areas transportation systems, not just the roads, but bicycle lanes, and walking paths. The Department also says plans are in place to address any cyber concerns.
“We have safeguards on all the systems. The bottom line is we don’t want to know who you are, we just want to know your travel characteristics, how you travel," said Kelleher.
Kelleher says she’s part of a similar survey already underway in Miami-Dade, Broward, and Palm Beach counties.
“If their concerns are to help us and make the traffic less, alleviate the traffic, I would fill it out," said Vinny Seminario.
The survey will run for the next few months.
