Fort Lauderdale staff present data-driven sidewalk master plan; commissioners urge focus on schools and faster outreach to school board

City staff and their consultant presented a data-driven sidewalk master plan to the Fort Lauderdale City Commission on Wednesday and sought direction before finalizing a prioritized implementation program.

Karen Warfel, the city’s transportation planning manager, and consultant Robert Modis described how staff created a sidewalk inventory using lidar, curb data and municipal shapefiles to identify gaps. The team applied weighting factors that reflected community input — proximity to residential areas, schools, parks and transit; roadway safety metrics; and demographic indicators such as zero-vehicle households — then scored gaps by 10-foot segments and grouped them into priority tiers.

At a high level, the study found about 437 miles of sidewalk gaps citywide. Consultant Modis said tier 1 and 2 segments emerged as short- and mid-term priorities appropriate for project consolidation and initial funding. Staff told commissioners the plan’s recommended approach is to build a “base network” starting with at least one side of prioritized streets and then fill in the other side over time.

Why it matters: Sidewalk expansion affects pedestrian safety, school walk zones and transit access. Commissioners repeatedly emphasized prioritizing routes that serve children and parks.

Commissioners asked staff to escalate outreach to the Broward County School Board and identify which schools were counted in the plan so commissioners could check whether private schools (e.g., Cardinal Gibbons) should be included. Commissioner Beasley Pittman urged elevating child safety as the top criterion: “Anything that has to do with child safety needs to be top priority,” she said.

Funding and next steps: Staff said a high-level estimate for fully addressing the 437 miles of gaps could be about $150 million. They also said groups 1 and 2 represent roughly 25% of the total prioritized mileage — a rough cost to accelerate those tiers would be in the low tens of millions (staff estimated approximately $36–37 million for group 1 and 2). The commission discussed potential financing options and noted prior conversations about using capital or bond proceeds to accelerate sidewalks alongside seawalls and road projects; staff said they would return with consolidated project clusters, a list of schools counted in the scoring, and funding options.

Staff also flagged the need to design logical project clusters that avoid “sidewalks to nowhere” and to use neighborhood-level consolidation so short projects connect to existing sidewalks.

Ending: The commission endorsed the methodology and asked staff to incorporate commissioner feedback — especially school and park connections and more outreach to the school board — and to return with project groupings, cost estimates and recommended funding sources.