Pinellas, Fort Pinellas and AECOM outline safety fixes after study of 49th Street corridor

A consultant team and Fort Pinellas staff presented a safety study for 49th Street on what the presenters called the county’s high-injury network, laying out 80 recommended countermeasures and a strategy to seek federal funding.

Adam Purcell, a city planner with AECOM, told the Board of County Commissioners that the study focused on two 2.5-mile segments of a longer 12- to 13-mile 49th Street corridor. "When I say 49th Street, that's about a 12 or 13 mile corridor from Gulfport all the way up to the Bayside Bridge," Purcell said, adding the study concentrated on segments selected for crash density and municipal boundaries.

The study, produced with Fort Pinellas and county staff, grew out of the 2021 Safe Streets Pinellas action plan and was supported by the federal Safe Streets and Roads for All competitive grant program. The project team said the report is intended both to identify short-term fixes and to support future grant applications for design and construction work.

Why this matters: the corridor carries high speeds, substantial pedestrian and transit activity and a concentration of serious-injury crashes. Purcell said the study identified 858 crashes in the roughly 2.5-mile study area during 2019–2023. "The predominant crash type in the area was a rear end crash, which accounted for about 50% of those crashes," he said; he added there were about 47 crashes classified as fatal or resulting in serious injuries and 49 involving bicyclists or pedestrians. The study separated contributing factors and emphasized that pedestrian- and bicycle-involved crashes are overrepresented among the most serious collisions in the northern study area.

Key findings and context

- Crash totals and severity: The project team reported 858…