Ideas on fixing Okeechobee Blvd. quagmire plenty, pricey

WEST PALM BEACH — There are cures for what ails Okeechobee Boulevard. Short-term, long-term. A few dollars, a few hundred million.

It’s a matter of which make the most sense, for now and then for the decades to come.

The busy approach to downtown West Palm Beach clogs during morning and afternoon drive times and pedestrians and bicycle riders find it hard to navigate safely at any time. And as developers embark upon one more apartment building, hotel and office tower, congestion worsens by the day.

But four days of workshops that concluded Thursday, led by consultants Alta Planning + Design, demonstrated to the hundreds of residents, business people and local officials who attended that the building levels of inconvenience and danger are not inevitable. In the collegial public sessions at the Palm Beach County Convention Center, the city-commissioned consultants laid out the options for the Okeechobee Corridor, part of a broader, citywide mobility study set to conclude this fall.

The options included:

Depressing the Tri-Rail tracks.

Turning the tent site into a transit hub for better bus routes.

Creating Clear Lake bike trails that more easily access downtown and Flagler Drive.

Eliminating or narrowing lanes and reshaping intersections to slow traffic and ease pedestrian crossings.

What about a one-block Okeechobee Boulevard tunnel with a grassy plaza on top? What about an elevated bike bridge over Clear Lake highway ramps, or a multidirectional pedestrian bridge linking City Place, the Kravis Center and the Convention Center? A park-and-ride lot just west of I-95 with free shuttle service to your office?

No decisions yet. The idea was to gather ideas into a sensible and cost-effective strategy for a downtown that the city is trying