For anyone paying attention, there have been a lot of car accidents happening in The Milk District, a few of them involving cars that have hopped the curb and went flying into nearby storefronts.
There have been 36 documented incidents involving car collisions and hit and runs along the Robinson Street corridor in the past two years, according to data shared by the Orlando Police Department.
The majority of those incidents took place just east of Bumby Avenue, where the storefronts are particularly close to the right-of-way, with a number of them having been struck in the past year, including Stasio’s Italian Deli and The Milk District Spot.
Milk District Main Street director Zac Alfson shared that he’s been working with the City of Orlando to try to find a solution, saying, “We haven’t had any fatalities yet, but the city has been very responsive and is working as a go-between with FDOT to come up with some solutions. We have developed a great relationship with the City’s transportation department.” Some of those solutions hinge on expediting some planned resurfacing projects on the road and carrying out some interim improvements like widening the curbs at Robinson and Bumby and adding caution markers to narrow the roadway and slow traffic, like Orlando’s Transportation Director, Tanya Wilder, shared in an earlier interview with Orlando Weekly.
Robinson Street is actually a state-owned road (State Road 526) which means any improvements on the street must be approved by the Florida Department of Transportation first, and that process can take time. FDOT is poised to enact a whole multimodal makeover of Robinson Street in the years to come and we’ve shared those plans previously HERE.
The Florida Department of Transportation will be holding a public meeting on the Robinson Street Improvement Project on Wednesday, July 27, at 5:30 pm. at the First Unitarian Church of Orlando to share progress and updates. The church is located at 1901 Robinson Street [GMap].
I am really surprised this hasn’t happened a lot more often than the current influx of vehicle vs store storefronts in this section of Robinson St.
I just don’t understand why they have never installed some type of barrier s along the sidewalk edge closest to the roadway to prevent this type of accident from occurring in the first place.
And that also includes roads like Highway 50 a.k.a. Colonial Drive as well.
Pedestrians on these sidewalks on such roads put their lives in jeopardy daily because the sidewalks and roads are far too close together!