Be Careful What You Wish For Pensacola

I recently traveled to the West Coast to a place I use to live.  It has been 28 years since I’ve lived in San Diego County (El Cajon, CA).  I was blown away by how much it has grown.  I use to tell my friends that I’d rather live in California verses Florida any day.  But after my trip, I changed my mind.  Pensacola is a fine place to live.  But it got me thinking, do I really want my home to become another San Diego, or Columbus, Ohio?

I was living in Columbus before I moved to Florida, and it has grown beyond belief as well, in the 15 short years that I have lived here in Pensacola.  Growth is often associated with wealth, but when it comes to a city, I’m not so sure that growth is a good thing.

The more people, the more trash; the more cars on the road, the greater the aggravation to travel about, not to mention the greater the exposure to toxic air pollutants.   And traffic on the beach has most certainly become a major concern over the past few years. 

TOLL BOOTH NUMBERS (for Bob Sikes Bridge – Memorial Day Weekend):

                2009 – 45,620 (inweekly)

2010 – 43.356 (WEAR TV)

                2011 – 48,774 (WEAR TV)

                2012 – 53,797 (WEAR TV) (57,472 inweekly - inweekly.net/wordpress/?p=15314 )

 

                2015 – 246,750 (Escambia County, Florida)

                2016 – 267,402 (Escambia County, Florida)

                2017 – 274,402 (Escambia County, Florida)

                www.publicnow.com/view/36CFE50014FA9432EC747B687918B9FB3DB55C92

Although these are holiday statistics, they are also an indication as to how popular Pensacola Beach has become over the years.  And it doesn’t have to be a holiday to get caught up traffic going to and coming from the beach.

This past Saturday on June 10^th, the wife and I attended a drum circle out on the beach that began at 6:00 pm.  Traffic was backed up in Gulf Breeze from 3-mile Bridge on.  I didn’t time the ride, but it certainly took quite a bit longer than we anticipated.

When we arrived at the pavilion we witnessed bumper to bumper traffic exiting the Casino Beach parking lot, and the entire time we were playing it stayed bumper to bumper busy.  When we decided to go home at 10:00 pm, there was still a long line of cars.

I’ve been out there twice now since they changed that particular parking lot with one way in and one way out, and I can honestly say, “It sucks!  And it isn’t working.”  We’ve all heard the rumors of roundabouts as well, and from a personal perspective, I believe that roundabouts will cause more accidents to occur on the beach then what we see now. 

 I like the idea of a ferry, and the trolley is good, but they are not impacting solutions. 

Face it Pensacola, we’re growing out of control.  With growth comes more hotels and high rises.  Do we really want that?  I moved to Pensacola, because I found it to be a treasured secret place on the planet.  If we begin adding more hotels and condo’s we’ll be no different than Ft. Walton, Destin, Panama City and all the rest of Florida.  We’ll no longer have bragging rights!

Maybe we ought to simply take ourselves out of the spot light for a minute?

Here’s the words I use to use when I spoke of San Diego – laid back, rancher style people, best Mexican food in America, upbeat, very friendly, environmentally aware. 

Now here’s how I describe San Diego today, after my short visit – very fast paced, unfriendly, mean-spirited people, you may want to think twice if you’re white and you go into a Mexican restaurant, and the people may be environmentally aware, but totally ignorant of the damage being caused by over populating an area. 

Now you may say Pensacola is no where near the size of San Diego, but we’re not talking about the county, we’re talking about a “small” island that has seen its limit.  If the island cannot handle the amount of traffic coming onto it (and leaving), and in turn has traffic backed up for hours at a time, then we’re killing ourselves with the smog alone.  In addition, long waits in line promotes anger anger!  We’re tired of sitting in the sun, and then we sit some more as we wait in a parking lot made of black asphalt and hot metal cars everywhere! 

If people are getting angry and frustrated just to get to the beach, they’ll eventually quit coming.  I know.  I did.  I’m a local and I avoid the beach like the plague when the Angels fly.  And although I am a lesbian, you won’t catch me anywhere near that beach on Memorial Day Weekend.  For me, it’s not worth the frustration and anger that accompanies these mob-cramped holidays. 

Maybe we should do like they do in New Mexico, at Bandelier National Monument.  They post several signs saying you are not allowed to drive into the park.  Instead you must park in a designated area and take the tour bus.  Only if you had a pet(s) would they allow you to drive into the park.  Here in Pensacola, we could take it step further and only allow locals to drive onto the island, and/or those with reservations who are staying more than one night on the beach.

We could use the parking lot at Gulf Breeze High School.  We could post signs that say all out of state visitors must exit here (at the high school) and take the bus.  And if a tourist does blow off the warning signs, we could charge them $20 just to cross the toll booth, or even more. 

Clearly, roundabouts and one way parking lots will not address the overcrowding.  Common sense dictates limiting the amount of vehicles on the island.  And in order to benefit from the trolley and ferry, we need to enforce legislation that restricts access to the beach.

And we can begin by ditching this needy corporate attitude of more, more, more.  We’ve seen our hey day; enough’s enough.  I’m grateful to live in such a place of beauty, and I would love to see it preserved for generations to come, not for just any Tom, Dick or Harry with a white collar and a fat wallet looking to profit at our expense.  It’s we the residents of Pensacola and Gulf Breeze that suffer and struggle with the negative consequences of these horrific traffic jams, not the CEO of Day’s Inn, or any number of these other hotels and condo owners looking for that uninterrupted daily 100% capacity.  So don’t buy into that false facade that we need to build more.  More hotels and more parking lots promote more traffic and more heat.  Think about it. 

We live here, and we need to protect what we love.