ORANGE COUNTY, Fla. — Keith Davis said he was surprised to come back to the house he’s owned for 23 years to find a pink-painted stake in his yard the other week.
Davis’ property wasn’t the only one. Up and down the neighborhood along Alamo Drive and other streets in Orange County, residents were greeted by the unwanted new lawn ornaments – often deep into their yards.
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“They can lean over and knock on the front door,” Davis surmised.
Across Orange County, the surprise has been followed by a wave of concern – even borderline outrage – as residents learned the county plans to install sidewalks down their streets.
Many of those streets have homes that have existed for decades, have low speed limits and are often the scenes of children playing in the middle of them.
“Our neighborhood leads to nowhere, so this simply doesn’t make sense,” one person wrote to the mayor.
Orange County’s push to build new sidewalks comes as planners embrace Vision Zero, an ambitious project to eliminate pedestrian and bicycle deaths across the region.
Orlando consistently ranks as one of – if not the – deadliest places in the country for pedestrians, a ranking leaders have vowed to shed.
Engineers say the county has budgeted $3.3 million for sidewalks this fiscal year and plans to build as much as 20 miles of sidewalks within a year if everything goes well.
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While serious and fatal crashes on low-speed roads are much rarer compared to their bigger, fast-moving counterparts, they do happen.
According to data collected by the Vision Zero team, Orange, Osceola and Seminole Counties had 941 crashes involving pedestrians and bicycles on streets 25 miles per hour or slower from 2018 to 2022.
133 of those crashes led to serious injuries or fatalities, which accounted for 10% of all serious or fatal crashes in the region during that time.
The volume of complaints has led at least one commissioner to respond in an email blast to constituents.
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“I never imagined the number of people who would write me upset about a new sidewalk,” District 2 Commissioner Christine Moore, who represents Apopka and northern Pine Hills, said.
Moore said contractors rarely place the sidewalk at the edge of the right-of-way and the county repairs damage to driveways and irrigation systems for free. She advised homeowners to keep their plants out of the right-of-way, which she said the county is free to work on without notice because it owns.
“Nothing makes me happier, though, to see an elderly person walking on a new sidewalk or watching a young child riding a bike safely away from the road,” her letter said. “It hurts my heart when you lose these sentimental items. It really does. But, at the end of the day, the county’s investment in your neighborhood brings additional safety and higher property values.”
While some parents said they’d feel better about their children with sidewalks in the neighborhood, some homeowners weren’t convinced.
“It’s a waste of money that can be put to better use somewhere else,” Davis said.
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