PORT TAMPA - The city council will seek grants to improve pedestrian and bicycle access to Picnic Island Park.
The council also wants Commerce Street designated as a trail corridor in the city's comprehensive plan. The road snakes through the busy Port Tampa industrial area to the 100-acre park at the southern tip of the Interbay Peninsula.
Transportation manager Tony Rodriguez told the council Thursday that Commerce has heavy truck traffic and speeding problems, but none of the 14 accidents on the road in the past three years involved pedestrians or bicyclists.
He said police are targeting the stretch for increased enforcement.
The city estimates up to 125,000 people a year visit Picnic Island, which has a boat ramp and beach swimming in Tampa Bay.
Reaching the park requires crossing two sets of railroad tracks and passing the gates of industries such as the Chevron fuel storage tanks and National Gypsum plant, each of which generates frequent truck traffic. A contractor also is using land near the park entrance as a staging area for a state widening project on Gandy Boulevard.
The South Tampa Greenway project calls for a trail from the Friendship TrailBridge at Gandy Boulevard to Picnic Island.
Picnic Island was created in the 1950s and early 1960s from the dredge spoils of the nearby shipping channel and port. Vestiges of a natural island remain on the north side of the park closer to the mainland.
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