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MEMORANDUM TO: Board of County Commissioners of Indian River County FROM: Bob Auwaerter Councilman -Elect— own of Indian River Shores DATE: October 17, 2016 SUBJECT: Proposal to Improve the Westward Evacuation of Citizens During an Emergency First of all, I want to complement the tremendous efforts of not only the team at the County, but also those who work at each of the local governments in our County, and the utility workers who helped our community recover so quickly after Hurricane Matthew. As I am sure after every event of this nature, your emergency team is doing an after - action assessment to review what things could go better next time. That is the subject of my input here. As a resident of the barrier island, I was one of our local citizens that was appropriately told to evacuate. As the Commissioners know, once you get past 1-95 going west, there are very few routes traversing the western portion of the County. My wife and I got a hotel room in Lakeland, which necessitated us traveling west on State Route 60. In our County, this is a well-built, limited access road with two lanes in each direction that can handle a large amount of traffic quickly. However, once it crosses over the Florida Turnpike, it narrows to one lane in each direction and then traffic is further slowed by a traffic light as it crosses over Route 441 at Yeehaw Junction just west of the Turnpike crossover (see the attached Google satellite view—the intersection in question is just below the red marker). When we left on Wednesday afternoon, this traffic light was running on its normal cycle, creating a chokepoint that caused westbound traffic on State Route 60 to come to a halt at least 6 miles to the east. What was particularly annoying was that when we crossed Route 441, there were less than 10 cars traveling on 441. When we returned Friday midday, the situation was even worse. Because State Route 60 is only one lane in each direction west of Yeehaw Junction, traffic came to a halt at least 8 miles in front of the same light. When I finally crossed eastbound over Route 441, 1 looked both north and south on 441 and literally could not see one car on that road. The result was that for our citizens an already stressful situation was made worse. In addition, thousands of gallons of gasoline were wasted. What is clearly needed is a traffic control officer giving priority to traffic on State Route 60. That intersection is in Osceola County so it would require cooperation with their Sheriff and possibly the Florida Highway Patrol. I would respectfully ask that you bring this to the attention of the appropriate members of your emergency response team as an item to correct for the next emergency. Thank you for your attention. 147