Safe Routes to Schools: Five-Year Project Set for Town Hall Thursday 

In this enlarged detail showing the plan for the area surrounding Key Biscayne K-8 Center, additional signage and infrastructure can be seen. A Town Hall meeting will take place Thursday Oct. 10 regarding the implementation of the Safe Routes to School initiative. (Kimley-Horn via Key News).

Residents will get a chance to talk to officials and engineers Thursday at a Town Hall meeting about the Village’s Safe Routes to School initiative. 

Five years in the making, Safe Routes to School  is part of a national program encouraging children to walk or bike to school, mostly through infrastructure improvements and education.

Key Biscayne’s 1,300 public school students stand to benefit from extra sidewalks and safer crossings. In the 2013 parent survey about the project, 72 percent of participants whose children walked or biked to school said their biggest concern was safety. 

There have been no fatal or serious accidents on Key Biscayne on account of transit to or from school, but Police Department data included in the project study found that only around 19 percent of trips to and from the Key Biscayne K-8 Center were on foot. Some schools participating in the national program have seen this increase to 50 percent.

Thursday’s Town Hall meeting is chiefly to inform residents about the purpose of the program and for residents who may be affected to air any concerns. 54 homes along the route on Glenridge, Ridgewood, West Wood Drive, and West Enid will see some kind of change in the swale area fronting their properties – mostly sidewalk modifications. The work will only take place in the public right-of-way, according to project engineers Kimley-Horn. 

This map shows the proposed safe routes to school for Key Biscayne as per the original plan by the firm Corradino. An updated plan is now in place from Kimley-Horn – though the routes remain much the same. A Town Hall meeting will take place Thursday Oct. 10 regarding the implementation of the Safe Routes to School initiative. (The Village of Key Biscayne via Key News).

“I, for one, will be very grateful to anyone who will have a sidewalk built across their drive or property, because my own kids’ feet will be walking on it every day,” said Vice Mayor Allison McCormick, council liaison to the board.

New sidewalks are not a new idea. Both the Village of Key Biscayne Master Plan and the 2020 Vision Plan champion adding sidewalks around the Village to improve mobility.

The Safe Routes project began in 2015 with a group of parents on the Village’s Education Advisory Board who were seeking ways to work with Miami-Dade County Public Schools on safety. 

Kristen Guess, current chair of the board and mother to twin boys, said “we heard about the national program and thought, who doesn’t want their kid to be safe going to school?”

In June 2018 the Village Council directed staff to start work with Kimley-Horn on the design phase. Village of Key Biscayne Public Works Director Jake Ozyman has been working closely with the firm and plans are now 90 percent complete. Timing is critical as the Village must finalize all plans and meet a series of deadlines – already extended – in order to retain $867,000 of grant funding awarded by the Florida Department of Transportation. The grant represents almost three quarters of the cost allocated for the project in the Village’s newly-passed fiscal year 2020 budget. 

A bump in the road came when the Village sent a certified letter to 54 property owners who would be affected by the project, containing incorrect information regarding their rights of appeal. That letter, dated Sept. 13, was approved by Village attorneys as well as senior staff, and a corrected version was sent out last week – albeit without explanation or apology. Village staff say they have heard from 11 residents with questions about the project. Some of the concerns expected at Thursday’s meeting may include the irregularity of the process to date, in a community accustomed to consultation before official notices and actions.

“It is very regrettable and not at all historically typical of how we operate in Key Biscayne that we notified people like this,” said McCormick. 

Following Thursday’s meeting, any suggested changes will be discussed with the FDOT. If for any reason the Village misses the grant deadlines or the project does not proceed, Ozyman says the Village would have to pay back around $100,000 spent to date to the federal government.