We all know there are growing pains when it comes to construction. Generally, traffic gets worse before it gets better.

But along Palm Avenue, Bay News 9 viewer Irene Gonzalez says the work the city is doing didn't need to start in the first place.

  • City says Palm Avenue will be safer, more efficient road
  • Project scheduled to finish later this year
  • Lanes reduced, with more congestion, viewer says

"There's been no traffic. There's been easy flow," Gonzalez said. "I think one time there was a big accident on I-4 and that was the biggest congestion we had on there. Now, there's congestion all the time -- all the time. And it's not because of the construction, it's because they've eliminated the lanes."

In the past, most of the traffic making left turns would stop in the left lane and back up traffic. There were some left turn lanes, but not everywhere.

"They just started some new construction on it, and they've reduced the lanes," Gonzalez said. "The traffic congestion is a lot more now. And it just seems the turning lanes are being cut off. It's just more traffic, and it doesn't make any sense."

To make some sense of things, I asked Jean Duncan with the city's transportation department to clarify what's happening here.

"So, what we'll be doing is we'll take that four-lane undivided roadway and create a three-lane section where we have two travel lanes," Duncan said. "And the center portion of the road is either for left turn bays for left turns, or medians for pedestrian refuge, or some of the medians will also have landscape opportunities as well."

Maybe you've heard of complete streets program. Palm Avenue is part of that vision.

The city says Palm Avenue is going to be a safer, more efficient road when work is done -- not just for cars but for pedestrians and cyclists, too.

The Palm Avenue project is scheduled to wrap up in late October or November of this year.