Regional planners present safety-action plan to Greenacres, urge street-tree preservation on Sherwood Forest

Kim Delaney, senior planner with the Treasure Coast Regional Planning Council, presented a draft safety action plan to the City of Greenacres during a council meeting, outlining recommended changes to reduce crashes and improve pedestrian and bicycle safety across the city.

Delaney said the plan is driven by crash data and local fieldwork: more than 20 intersections in Greenacres recorded five or more crashes in the last five years, and the city’s younger population and high commuter flows make street safety a pressing issue. “Not 1 crash with an injury or a fatality is acceptable,” Delaney said.

The plan recommends a citywide approach that applies “complete streets” and Vision Zero principles: traffic-calming elements such as speed tables, splitter islands and roundabouts; elevated or lighted crosswalks; protected bike lanes or shared-use paths; improved transit stops; and corridor landscaping. Delaney emphasized the relationship between vehicle speed and survivability, noting that higher speeds sharply reduce a pedestrian’s chance of surviving a vehicle collision.

Delaney highlighted several corridors the plan prioritizes: Sherwood Forest Boulevard, Biscayne Drive, Swain Boulevard, Jog Road, Haverhill, Purdy Lane, Cresthaven, Bowman Street, Lake Worth Road, Military Trail and Malaluca Lane. For Sherwood Forest specifically, she recommended preserving and expanding the tree canopy, adding crosswalks and a shared-use path on one side rather than supporting a continuous three-lane widening that would remove most street trees. She said county preliminary plans for Sherwood Forest show multiple locations where trees would be removed.

The presentation summarized outreach and analysis behind the plan: two public workshops (including an evening session attended by about 85 residents and staff), meetings with Palm Beach County, FDOT and the school district, and GIS mapping of homes, schools, parks and transit stops. Delaney noted Greenacres has about 9 schools, roughly 100 acres of parks, a median age of about 36 (compared with Palm Beach County’s median age of 44), and roughly 24% of residents under 18. Using 2022 commuter figures, she said roughly 6,800 people commute into the city for work daily and about 17,000 leave the city for work; about 650 people both live and work in Greenacres.

Council members asked questions about implementation and coordination. Deputy Mayor Diaz asked how the city could influence county projects already in the design phase, especially Sherwood Forest. Delaney recommended early engagement with the county, submitting formal comments and, where possible, identifying additional grant or local funding for alternative designs. “Working early…having early conversations, identifying those improvements, and working collaboratively to secure grant or other funding to pay for those additional improvements is really the best way to be successful,” she said.

Council member Busquay asked about speed tables; Delaney replied, “They are tremendously successful. They are fairly low cost,” and noted temporary speed tables can be used before permanent installations. Delaney also noted the plan is intended to help the city compete for Transportation Planning Agency and FDOT grant dollars by providing an inventory of prioritized improvements.

Delaney said specific design recommendations include marking Biscayne as a “sharrow” where appropriate (it is posted at 25 mph), adding a premium bicycle network of approximately 25 miles (the city currently has about five miles of bicycle facilities), and using medians and street trees to create a sense of enclosure that encourages lower vehicle speeds. She also noted that some county roads (Jog, Haverhill, Forest Hill, Military Trail) have limited right-of-way, and suggested targeted solutions such as widening sidewalks into the utility strip, adding transit shelters and calming on neighborhood connectors.

The city manager later said staff can draft a letter to Palm Beach County outlining the council’s priorities for Sherwood Forest after the council adopts the safety action plan. Delaney repeatedly underlined that corridor ownership and funding (county, FDOT) affect the city’s ability to implement certain changes and that collaboration and grant pursuit are the likely path to altering county plans.

The plan’s public contact and comment address — created for the project — is safecity@greenacresfl.gov. Delaney closed by inviting further questions and noting this presentation was the region’s second formal public workshop and the third overall meeting on the safety action plan.