Yet another City of Sarasota mess

[Tominftl]

My aunt used to live there she called it SORRY SOTA. I guess she saw what most of you are complaining about.

[beach43ofus]

Originally Posted by powerballer

True, but the city heretofore has never been that liberal at all - now you have fools that want to spend more money on inlaid traffic circles LOL

I think 4 of 5, or 5 of 5 SRQ City Councilpersons are Dems...no?

I hate circles and roundabouts. I live near one and it screws up all the traffic flows around it. People start cutting through shopping center parking lots to avoid it, and that causes accidents and a lot more traffic volume through the lots than they were designed for. I saw a old lady driving the wrong direction in a circle not long ago. They really confuse some elderly drivers.

If they place parking meters all over the City of Sarasota and out on Lido Key and St. Armands, it will definitely chase me and my consumer dollars away. I spend a decent amount of cash in those places now, and I'm not saying I'll never go there, but just much less frequently. I'll go downtown Venice instead...after the big dig is over.

[gypsychic]

Originally Posted by beach43ofus

I think 4 of 5, or 5 of 5 SRQ City Councilpersons are Dems...no?

I hate circles and roundabouts. I live near one and it screws up all the traffic flows around it. People start cutting through shopping center parking lots to avoid it, and that causes accidents and a lot more traffic volume through the lots than they were designed for. I saw a old lady driving the wrong direction in a circle not long ago. They really confuse some elderly drivers.

If they place parking meters all over the City of Sarasota and out on Lido Key and St. Armands, it will definitely chase me and my consumer dollars away. I spend a decent amount of cash in those places now, and I'm not saying I'll never go there, but just much less frequently. I'll go downtown Venice instead...after the big dig is over.

Well, in all fairness, almost all other cities have parking meters in downtowns and at beaches. I don't like them, but it is, what it is. The problem with the meters that were previously installed downtown were they screwed up and placed these ridiculous meters that were difficult to read or understand and often malfunctioned! They need to put regular meters that you feed the coins into and that's that.

As for St. Armand's it is such a parking mess over there that we just never go. There is just insufficient parking PERIOD for beaches, St. Armands and downtown, yet the city allows more and more building. It is just ridiculous. I am honestly amazed sometimes that people still want to move here. There really needs to be more ways to move people between points like airport to downtown, around downtown to beaches, etc. St. Pete has trolleys that do this, they are awesome.

[beach43ofus]

Sarasota could re-allocate money from its bloated tourism advertising budget to fund the busses you suggest.

1 problem is where would you park your car in Downtown SRQ to take the bus out to Lido Key? The City should acquire land now to convert into a parking lot for that purpose that isnt too far from bridge. Just North of Downtown would be best, but it would need to be secured due to crime up there.

Additional funds ~$150,000,000 could come from selling Bobby Jones Golf facility. Use the proceeds to buy the shuttle bus parking lot and main bus terminal.

Problem the city has is they are drowning in Pension debt/promises they cannot keep. They must address this before it bankrupts them, or things will slide downhill into the abyss. Google City of Sarasota + pension and you will see articles by the Sarasota Herald Tribune about it. It's the City's #1 problem that needs to be solved.

[d4g4m]

Reasons why I no longer visit anywhere within the city limits. It seems they don't want vehicles driving around.
Revenue producing cameras on traffic lights, 15 of them. Something they call a 'roundabout' That's where they take a functioning intersection, remove stop signs/traffic light, make no intersection improvements, install a circle to become a poorly designed, micro sized 'roundabout'. Then there are all the 3 and 4 way stop signs, most at intersections where you wonder, why are they here except for speed control, especially when one of the streets is from a dead end street. Artificially really low speed limits [makes everyone a 'speeder'] speed bumps and speed tables and the 'bump out'. And when you get to your destination 'downtown', you find that a revenue generator parking enforcement person marred a tire on your car with a 'chalk sock'. And don't spend two minutes over your allotted parking time.

[beach43ofus]

Originally Posted by d4g4m

Reasons why I no longer visit anywhere within the city limits. It seems they don't want vehicles driving around.
Revenue producing cameras on traffic lights, 15 of them. Something they call a 'roundabout' That's where they take a functioning intersection, remove stop signs/traffic light, make no intersection improvements, install a circle to become a poorly designed, micro sized 'roundabout'. Then there are all the 3 and 4 way stop signs, most at intersections where you wonder, why are they here except for speed control, especially when one of the streets is from a dead end street. Artificially really low speed limits [makes everyone a 'speeder'] speed bumps and speed tables and the 'bump out'. And when you get to your destination 'downtown', you find that a revenue generator parking enforcement person marred a tire on your car with a 'chalk sock'. And don't spend two minutes over your allotted parking time.

Sounds like oppression, restricing freedom of movement and the right to gather, and the camera's are a violation of privacy. In the end, it will be SRQ City worker pensions that will doom the City.

[skeddy]

all good reasons to move out of the area.

[beach43ofus]

Originally Posted by skeddy

all good reasons to move out of the area.

...or, not move into the City of Sarasota in the first place....like us.

[craigiri]

Hard to critique traffic stops - since that is a well-known Florida tactic - and even Southern one. In the last 20 years the wife and I got virtually zero tickets up north. We bought our SRQ house and within 2 weeks we each had a $160 or so speeding ticket - one from Bradenton and one from Sarasota County.

So that's an equal opportunity thing.

A Florida city that doesn't plan? What else is new? Virtually all of Florida is unplanned....or, if planned, not done right. I actually studied some of the City Master Plans and they did a decent job...and much of it is working well. A lot of it was slowed down by the Recession, of course.

This may be more a matter of preferred lifestyles. A City Lifestyle and a "near the interstate" lifestyle are as different as night and day. My best days are those when I don't have to get in a car...I can walk or bike most anywhere. It's nice to walk all the way DT and back and maybe go to the Farm Market or an eatery...or maybe play tennis at top-notch clay courts. Lots of other stuff.....right there. I can walk to a large number of movie screens and live performance venues, etc. - you have to trade in something for that.

I'm sure every dense city has it's problems. We were involved with small town politics and - believe me - if you look close enough at it, you will likely be shocked. Dollars to donuts that we could write books about corruption, missteps, problems and other things in Bradenton or in Sarasota County, etc - just that both those place have more room to mess up before the chit really hits the fan.

I think more and more people are likely to stay closer to home in the future. i've seen it already - people at the beach often never will go to the Mall because, with traffic, it can be 45 minutes or even longer. That's not paradise!

The same goes the other way around. Once a family has a couple bad traffic experiences going to the Beach from Lakewood they are likely to go to the Retention Pond instead (Benderson, etc.) and call it a day.