News:

Thanks to everyone for the feedback on what errors you encountered from the forum database changes made in Fall 2023. Let us know if you discover anymore.

Main Menu

Toll on US1 Overseas Highway

Started by mapman1071, June 22, 2017, 11:37:47 PM

Previous topic - Next topic

mapman1071

Read article on proposal from local residents to FDOT and Monroe County in the keys wanting to place a toll on Highway 1 for Non Residents of the Keys.
www.miamiherald.com/news/local/community/florida-keys/article155564719.html
 


Max Rockatansky

How friggin arrogant is that move?  :rolleyes:  For those who don't know, there is a lot of really stuck up people who really hate the tourists they money off of in the Florida Keys, namely those who own property.  It really sounds like a move either deter people away or to price gouge them even more to use the Keys.  For what its worth you really ought to be fully aware that you are traveling a heavily tourist driven road when you go the Florida Keys on US 1 and plan accordingly.  Every time the people in the Keys seem to get one of these ideas it tends to go really poorly or is dissolved after a couple decades.  I guess it isn't good enough to pay all those tolls on the Turnpike Extension just to get to US 1 quickly for some people....how disappointing...

Anyways, Keyshistory.org has a really good article on the Florida Keys toll district when US 1 replaced FL 4a in 1938:

http://www.keyshistory.org/pigeonkey.html

Incidentally if you really want to get someone in the Florida Keys upset at you, suggest building an expressway to the mainland and watch the sparks fly.  I say all this after living a couple years down in the Keys and commuting on the Overseas Highway if anyone is wondering what I base my opinion off of.  And yes, I'm the kind of person who gladly paid the county toll on Card Sound Road just to avoid the 18 Mile Stretch of US 1.  Yes it would likely relieve some traffic but its hard not to see what the real motive is for the local populace is after living down there.   I guess on the flip side if tolls become a thing again on US 1 it will make for a slightly easier trip in the middle of the day.

jwolfer

The most annoying ones aren't even from there. They are retirees or idle rich who move there and then want to keep the riff raff, middle class tourists away.  And make speed limits 35mph. I sometimes post on city data forms there is a super annoying woman who lives in the upper Keys. She brags about how hard she wored to move to paradise but now shes there she doesnt want anyone else moving into or visiting Monroe County

My nephews wife is a multi generation conch. Key West HS graduate and all. She said most of thr people she grew up with cant afford to live there anymore

LGMS428


renegade

From the linked article:

"[A] scandal over inappropriate revenue use, in part, caused the Matecumbe toll booth to be taken down."

People friggin' embrace that kind of scandalous shit nowadays, so tolls will probably be allowed to happen.  Someone's pockets will be well-lined as a result.

I'll bet a buck it'll cost more than a buck.
Don’t ask me how I know.  Just understand that I do.

Max Rockatansky

Quote from: jwolfer on June 23, 2017, 01:04:15 AM
The most annoying ones aren't even from there. They are retirees or idle rich who move there and then want to keep the riff raff, middle class tourists away.  And make speed limits 35mph. I sometimes post on city data forms there is a super annoying woman who lives in the upper Keys. She brags about how hard she wored to move to paradise but now shes there she doesnt want anyone else moving into or visiting Monroe County

My nephews wife is a multi generation conch. Key West HS graduate and all. She said most of thr people she grew up with cant afford to live there anymore

LGMS428

Funny....I had that exact person in mind when I wrote my post.  :-D   For the most part you're exactly right, it isn't the as they put "Salt Water Conchs" that tend to be the issue but rather the "Fresh Water" water variety.  I was in a car club with a bunch of born and raised locals, they were some of the nicest people you could ever meet.  Even more ironic there is a version of the same person doing the same thing with CA 1 and Big Sur these days...but that is a story for another board that has already been told.  Even still, the only signed portions of US 1 which are 35 MPH outside of Key West is the nighttime speed limit on Big Pine Key and downtown Marathon on the approach to the Seven Mile Bridge.  For the most part FDOT has done a pretty decent job considering the geographic restraints on keeping US 1 as a freely flowing roadway.  The side streets and especially the former state highways is where you get those problem 25-30 MPH speed limits.  There is no way that roads like; Boca Chica Road and sections State Road 4a need to be slower than 40 MPH. 

froggie

Give it about 30 years...sea level rise will flood them all out and it'll be a moot point.

roadman65

Well if people would care about getting to point b without using that damned GPS, it would not give ideas to the State to be able to do it!  Most people especially with TOLL written on black on yellow, still do not know they entered the toll roads as I had said before.  I do not blame them one bit as our society loves its toys except for ORT devices cause then they realize it cost them money per daily usage.  However, with phones, GPSes, and even flying out on weekends where more money is spent is worth it cause "everybody else has them, so I need to be hip too."
Every day is a winding road, you just got to get used to it.

Sheryl Crowe

Brian556

Quote from froggie:
QuoteGive it about 30 years...sea level rise will flood them all out and it'll be a moot point.

Good point. It annoys me how people are denying this despite all the evidence that sea level has already risen around Florida.

Quote from roadman65:
QuoteWell if people would care about getting to point b without using that damned GPS, it would not give ideas to the State to be able to do it!  Most people especially with TOLL written on black on yellow, still do not know they entered the toll roads as I had said before.  I do not blame them one bit as our society loves its toys except for ORT devices cause then they realize it cost them money per daily usage.  However, with phones, GPSes, and even flying out on weekends where more money is spent is worth it cause "everybody else has them, so I need to be hip too."

Agree. I have never used one of those. They are for dummies in my opinion

SP Cook

Soooooo, tourism will suffer if too many people go there. 

Wow.  Yogi said "nobody goes there anymore, it is too crowded."


roadman65

Quote from: froggie on June 23, 2017, 10:39:49 AM
Give it about 30 years...sea level rise will flood them all out and it'll be a moot point.

Did not Nostradamus predict Florida would sink into the sea? 
Every day is a winding road, you just got to get used to it.

Sheryl Crowe

hotdogPi

Quote from: roadman65 on June 23, 2017, 11:27:46 AM
Quote from: froggie on June 23, 2017, 10:39:49 AM
Give it about 30 years...sea level rise will flood them all out and it'll be a moot point.

Did not Nostradamus predict Florida would sink into the sea?

The highest elevation of Key West is 18 feet, according to Wikipedia. The Wikipedia article on "future sea level" mentions several predictions for sea level rise at the end of the 21st century, but the highest number mentioned is 1.4m (4.5 feet). Some of the keys will sink soon, but Key West will take a few hundred years, and it will take a long time for all of Florida to sink.

I couldn't find the height of the bridges connecting the islands.
Clinched, minus I-93 (I'm missing a few miles and my file is incorrect)

Traveled, plus US 13, 44, and 50, and several state routes

I will be in Burlington VT for the eclipse.

froggie

^ Doesn't matter if it would take "a few hundred years."  Any appreciable rise in sea level, even as little as one foot, will make those low-lying islands much more prone to recurrent flooding and storm surges, even if the land itself remains above sea level.

Brian556

Quote from froggie:
Quote^ Doesn't matter if it would take "a few hundred years."  Any appreciable rise in sea level, even as little as one foot, will make those low-lying islands much more prone to recurrent flooding and storm surges, even if the land itself remains above sea level.

Agree.
Look at what is happening in Miami with the King Tides.  Look at how SR A1A was destroyed in Hurricane Matthew. Flagler Beach is way narrower than it would naturally be if SR A1A wasn't there. Sea level rise is already taking a toll.

One vertical foot of rise would move the beach much farther inland.

roadman65

The Earth is a mighty force in itself.  For millenniums we have seen major changes as once we were a one continent world and now seven continents. Earthquakes too have even changed the flow of the Mississippi River hence why KY owns land on the west side in some places.  Even specials on the National Geographic Channel suggest more major calamities will change our planet over time as well.

Yes we and our inventions such as the automobile, styrofoam, and the factories we made to make other substances  that have contributed to a lot things in the worlds ecosystem and environment, but still even if we lived as the Amish do we still would have our share of natural changes in our Earth too.  Perhaps not as bad, but then again look at Great Smoky Mountains in Tennessee and North Carolina, its damage to trees happened long before man polluted the air itself.  We have had global ice ages, and one time a major comet or asteroid hit the Earth ending the dinosaurs tenor as supreme beings of our world.

So the possibility of Florida sinking and that all of California west of the fault line could actually happen.  Not to scare anyone, but we have to accept the fact our Earth is alive and destructive forces are inevitable.
Every day is a winding road, you just got to get used to it.

Sheryl Crowe



Opinions expressed here on belong solely to the poster and do not represent or reflect the opinions or beliefs of AARoads, its creators and/or associates.