Talk of The Villages Florida - View Single Post - Golf carts as a traveling machine
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Old 04-21-2015, 12:06 PM
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Some more discussion of the multi-modal path by a Supervisor Knoll in January found in the VCDD 5 Meeting 4/17/15 notes on the district gov web site
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Supervisor Knoll stated “Yeah, I, Mr. Chairman, when I saw it was on the agenda I took a ride
up to District 4 on my golf cart and did some multi-modal path cruising and I noticed first of all there’s a
difference in terms of the paths on the north side of 466 versus the south side in certain areas where
they’re paths are much narrower because of restrictions; such as if you look at the entrance to Belle Aire
off of Buena Vista, is one indication and there are others, the path is forced to be narrower just because
of existing walls and other things that are in place so it can cause some problems because it is my
understand that multi-modal paths are just that, they’re there for golf carts, they’re there for bicycles,
pedestrians, joggers, walkers, I happened to be a bicyclist, not of Lance Armstrong’s quality I can assure
you but a bicyclist nonetheless and it seems to me that the introduction of striping adds certain
conditions that may cause us problems in the future. The speed limit on these things is basically the
speed limit of a golf cart, 20 miles per hour, I know I don’t do 20 in my bicycle and most walkers and
joggers and even some accomplished aren’t at that speed, even some of the golf carts aren’t of that
speed. If you insert, say a dash line as I saw in District 4 it suggests that golf carts cannot only go
around bicyclists and pedestrians, which they probably will want to, but they can also go around slower
moving golf carts and exceed that 20 mile per hour speed limit to do so and I don’t think that, they’re
VCDD No. 5 - Meeting Minutes
January 16, 2015
Page 7
not supposed to do. The other thing that I noticed, and I noticed in our District is most of the side
streets, and I’m not referring to Belvedere or Churchill because they are striped, but all of the other
streets are not and I don’t want to get to the point where I’m treating a multi-modal path like a road by
striping it and putting in all sorts of conditions. I think the installation of certain reflective markers that
we already have in place at curves and so forth have provided the necessary safety and suggestions to
golf cart operators that this is where you have to stay. The other thing I like about the raised markers is
if somebody and unfortunately there are many people who have some sight restrictions, the markers give
them a, literally a physical notice that they have drifted over the line because you get a thump, thump,
thump when you drive over it, where on stripe not necessarily so. So I guess given that and the time, I
spent a fair amount of time reflecting on the topic once your brought it up and taking a look in District 4,
it’s my view that we would be better off not striping the multi-modal paths.
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