The Villages Amenity Authority Committee Thursday requested a pair of engineering studies to cope with safety issues with the Springdale Fitness Trail and the Chula Vista postal station.
One study would review the cost of widening the trail or installing ribbon curbing to better accommodate walkers, runners, bicycles and golf carts. The other study would determine the feasibility of changing the traffic pattern at the congested postal station.
The trail, which runs from Belle Meade Circle to the Mulberry Recreation Center via the Lopez Legacy Country Club, would be the same size as multi-modal trails if it were widened by three feet.
Although committee members voted unanimously to request the engineering study, they differed sharply on what should be done with the trail. Besides widening and the ribbon concrete, they also discussed installing a separate walking trail or doing nothing.
“It was designed as a fitness trail,” said committee member Don Deakin. “That’s what we put there. It has become something else over the years.”
District Manager Janet Tutt said golf carts also have used the trail since its opened in 2002.
AAC member John Wilcox said golf carts and walkers now share the trail and he sees no need to widen it.
“I think we’re looking for a problem so we can create a solution,” he said. “I think we’re a little early on trying to find a problem that doesn’t exist.”
District Property Manager Sam Wartinbee said the “asphalt trail is holding together fairly well.”
But committee member Carl Bell said although the trail was conceived as a fitness trail, it should be widened to make it like the community’s multi-modal trails.
“I can’t legislate how people are using it,” he said. “I have to accept reality.”
The committee requested another engineering study on changing the traffic flow at the Chula Vista postal station. Villages staff members recommended against a change.
“It has operated exceptionally well,” Tutt said of the existing traffic pattern. “The challenges are when people not doing what they’re supposed to do.”
But Villager Sandra Meyer told the committee she has seen minor accidents and many near misses when she plays bocci ball at the postal station two afternoons a week.
“We are continually hearing tires screech,” she said. “The traffic problem is one of the worst in The Villages.”
One proposal would create a one-way traffic flow at the postal station to separate cars and carts coming in from those leaving.