Streets have played a major role in the development of College Park, a neighborhood adjacent to downtown Orlando, Florida. The neighborhood’s Princeton, Harvard, and Yale streets influenced the naming of the city’s first subdivision and eventually the naming of the neighborhood.

Beginning in 1999, local stakeholders gave College Park a new identity by transforming Edgewater Drive, its main street. The four-lane road was extremely unsafe; it carried more than 20,000 speeding motorists per day, and it experienced crashes nearly every three days and injuries every nine days. Because the road also contained limited space for sidewalks, bike lanes, and streetscape, the city of Orlando implemented a lane reduction—or “road diet”—to regain space for pedestrians and bicyclists. Since the project’s implementation, Edgewater Drive has become a noticeably healthier and safer street. Traffic speeds and the number of crashes have been reduced, and both the volume and satisfaction of pedestrians and bicyclists have increased.

Lead Agencies:
City of Orlando and the Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT)

Redevelopment Strategies:
State Department of Transportation funding, Lane reduction to improve pedestrian and bike access and safety

Features:
Road Diet (from four lanes to three), bike lanes in both directions, widened on-street parking, 77 new businesses

Source:
https://americas.uli.org/research/centers-initiatives/building-healthy-places-initiative/healthy-corridors/the-building-healthy-corridors-report/