City can’t fix boulevard if leaders are in opposite lanes

It’s the busiest downtown street in Palm Beach County’s biggest city, the gateway into West Palm Beach ... and it’s a crowded mess.

Okeechobee Boulevard is bisected by railroad tracks and bridge openings that slow its traffic, about 70,000 trips a day. And it’s too wide for pedestrians to cross comfortably or safely — a real problem with a thriving convention center on one side of the street and a bustling CityPlace on the other.

It’s going to take a good deal of thinking, planning — and consensus — to make improvements. And with the city’s mayor snubbing a recent “summit” on the problem for her own future confab, that consensus looks far off. That’s not good.

About 200 people attended the former summit, held May 22 at the aforementioned Palm Beach County Convention Center, which, the attendees learned, is well-booked for the next couple of years and is considering an expansion. If any one thing could threaten that bright future for a key asset to the region’s economy, it would be a conventioneer getting hit by a car while braving Okeechobee’s endless lanes of traffic.

Would a pedestrian overpass be the answer? Reconfiguring the traffic lanes and median strip? Lower speed limits? Diverting more traffic onto Australian Avenue?

Any of these might help. But the physical obstacles against fixing this stretch of road are imposing. Railroad gates halt traffic at two locations, and Brightline’s high-speed passenger service is just weeks from adding 32 more crossings per day. The city is in a historic building boom: Soon, new hotels, apartment towers and office buildings will be drawing thousands more people into the downtown to live and work.

And who exactly is in charge? The city government has the most at stake in seeing that downtown West Palm Beach works as the business, cultural and residential center that city leaders envision. Yet Florida Department of Transportation bears the main responsibility for the road. Palm Beach County is in charge of traffic signals. The U.S. Coast Guard regulates the timing of openings of the Royal Park Bridge.

Getting all these entities on the same page — while soliciting public opinion — is going to take skillful, determined and open-minded leadership. So far, we haven’t seen it.

The May 22 meeting was called by West Palm Beach City Commissioner Shanon Materio, Palm Beach Mayor Gail Coniglio and Palm Beach County Commissioner Mack Bernard. Conspicuously absent was West Palm Beach Mayor Jeri Muoio, who called the gathering “a distraction.” She clearly would like the central story to be the city’s mobility study, an already-commissioned $579,000 contract with Alta Planning + Design consultants who are proposing a greater emphasis on walking, bikes, buses, trolleys and train travel.

The miffed mayor has her own Okeechobee Boulevard public meetings planned at the convention center from June 12-15.

At the earlier meeting, County Administrator Verdenia Baker and traffic engineer George Webb made an intriguing case for a pedestrian overpass connecting the convention center and Hilton Hotel with CityPlace. As in some European and Asian cities, this could be a lot more than a bridge over a highway: it could be a design feature that links to buildings’ second stories (making it easy and attractive to use) while serving as an architectural signature.

Muoio opposes an overpass, saying that studies show that people don’t use them.

Let’s not have an impasse over an overpass. And let’s not rule out reasonable ideas before discussion even gets off the ground. Okeechobee Boulevard is going to be hard enough to fix without our leaders driving in opposite directions.