CBS12 News Team

Delray Beach officials look to ease Atlantic Avenue gridlock

DELRAY BEACH, Fla. -- Delray Beach's main strip, Atlantic Avenue, is a hotspot for entertainment. It is also a hotspot for traffic.
The city's plans are to ease the congestion by changing the traffic flow along the streets that run parallel to Atlantic. But, they've hit a few snags in their plans along the way.
Downtown Delray is teeming with life. Restaurants, bars and shopping, all along along Atlantic Avenue.
"It's like paradise. There's restaurants, there's people out ."
But it's also a bottleneck for drivers.
Just ask the locals who avoid driving down it like the plague.
"I leave that to the people who want to see the sights. I'm usually up and down the back streets. That's why I would like all the streets to go both ways."
Both ways, according to the city of Delray is the plan for Atlantic's parallel streets.
They'll be changing the Southeast 1st Street bypass from one-way, to two-way all the way from Swinton to US 1.
The project is to ease the flow of traffic, and make it safer.
Iam Hedendal lives at the corner of SE 1st Street and U.S. 1 and says the current one way setup is a mess.
"On a daily basis we have cars going the wrong way, and we're screaming slow down, turn around. The cops are always turning somebody around here."
But it could take up to 18 months until these changes happen. City officials say they'll have to wait until another project, US 1's "beautification project" begins.
The improvements require changing traffic lights out, which can't be done until the beautification project is underway.
"If that would speed up traffic doing it, I think that would have merit."

Tuesday, May 1 2012, 02:34 PM EDT

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