By Terry Witt – Spotlight Senior Reporter

                Chiefland City Commissioners Monday voted to request a study by the Florida Department of Transportation on whether golf carts can be allowed to cross two busy U.S. Highway intersections in the city.

            The board wants to know if one of the largest traffic light intersections in the city that takes traffic from Wal-Mart on one side and Winn-Dixie (Chiefland Regional Shopping Center) on the other can be designed to allow golf carts to cross.

            A second busy intersection at the corner of U.S. 129 and NE 4^th Street will also be addressed in the DOT study.

            Chiefland is home to Southern Leisure Recreational Vehicle Resort behind Wal-Mart and to Strawberry Fields Recreational Vehicle Park a half a block off U.S. 129 along NE 4^th St.

            When the RV parks fill to capacity at this time of year, Chiefland’s population doubles and many of the RV owners like the convenience of traveling by golf cart to stores or other locations in the city.

            Ryan Asmus, project engineer for the U.S. 19 Project Development and Environment study that is preparing the highway for the day when toll road traffic from Suncoast Parkway will travel on U.S. 19, said the study of the two intersections will take three to six months and won’t cost the city anything.

            Golf carts from RV parks already cross the intersection between Walmart and Chiefland Regional Shopping Center but not legally. The DOT study will determine whether it can be done at all.

            Audience members said they think golf carts are also crossing U.S. 129 by Strawberry Fields to take a back dirt road to the Wal-Mart Supercenter and nearby businesses and restaurants, though crossing that federal highway isn’t legal, either.

            Strawberry Fields has a more complicated location. The driveway of Strawberry Fields empties onto NE 4^th Street which connects to U.S. 129 a half block away, but to reach Wal-Mart, golf carts must travel about 80 yards eastward through the ditch and cross 129 at the intersection of NE 3^rd St.  They take NE 3^rd St. to NE 12^th Ave., before heading for Wal-Mart on an almost infamous dirt road called NE 11^th Drive.

            The city is planning to pave NE 11^th Drive, a dirt road pitted with what some describe as potholes so big they look like craters on the moon, after a few other engineering projects are finished next year. City Manager Laura Cain said the city’s new engineer might be freed to start working on the road project sometime around mid-year, although she wasn’t sure exactly when. Capturing stormwater is one of the big engineering challenges facing the project. NE 11th Drive passes behind NAPA, ABC Pizza, a car wash and Pizza Hut and Kentucky Fried Chicken and has no stormwater drains. City light poles are planted in the street right of way and must be moved at some point. The giant potholes are the smallest issue.

            The city commission jokingly nicknamed NW 11^th Drive as Witt Road Monday because of how often this reporter asks whether there is any progress toward paving it. The city commission has set aside $300,000 in the current budget to design and engineer the complex project. Once completed, the paved road will give Chiefland residents a backway around busy traffic on U.S. 19 to reach U.S. 129. If Strawberry Fields residents get their way, it will give them a golf cart road to Walmart and perhaps eventually Winn-Dixie.

            City commissioners have already designated about a dozen streets for golf cart traffic. The streets are posted with golf cart traffic signs. City Attorney Norm Fugate said every street in the city can be legally traveled by golf cart under state statute, but golf carts can’t cross major federal highways without a study by DOT first to determine how it can be done safely or if it can be done safely.

            Fugate said golf carts can cross state highways intersections that connect with a county road or a city street but only if the DOT studies the intersection first and determines if golf cart traffic is possible and what safety design features are needed, if any, to make the crossing possible.

            Fugate and Police Chief Scott Anderson indicated if a golf cart is street legal – with a license plate, headlights, windshield, etc. – are considered to be just like other vehicles in traffic. However, Asmus said a DOT study would be required before golf carts of any type are allowed to travel on a federal or state highway or to cross the highways at an intersection.

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City of Chiefland Regular Meeting December 12, 2022; Posted December 13, 2022