POLK COUNTY, Fla. (WFLA) – The city of Lakeland may reconsider adding speed tables to Lake Morton Drive after two swans were hit by vehicles and died in the last week.
“I just had to watch this beautiful swan die. Please slow down,” said Cynthia Young-Jennings in a video she recorded in the aftermath of the tragic incident last week.
One black swan died on Lake Morton Drive Wednesday.
“It was awful to watch. He was suffering. There was nothing I could do,” said Young-Jennings, who witnessed the incident and sat with the swan as it died. “It was just awful. It really stayed with me, I mean it’ll always stay with me, but it stayed with me strong for a couple of days.”
She saw another smaller waterfowl dead on the side of the road a few days later.
There was more tragedy on Saturday when Another black swan died near Lake Mirror, according to Lakeland Police.
Since then, Lakeland Police has increased its patrols in the area.
Officers wrote 20 tickets this week on Lake Morton Drive.
The city will also be adding at least two more signs reminding drivers that the speed limit is 20 miles per hour. That brings the total amount of signs to 10.
“There are plenty of signs, I will say, but it’s not gonna hurt to put a couple more in there to give more information,” said Angelo Rao, City of Lakeland Traffic Operations & Parking Services Manager.
This expands measures the city has taken in the last year and a half after five swans were killed in the span of three weeks in Sept. 2018.
“We reduced the speed limit to 20 miles per hour, regulatory speed limit, and we installed a lot of signs giving to that effect. We installed some warning signs. We installed parking boxes, where before it was just loose parking,” said Rao, of improvements made since 2018.
Young-Jennings believes more needs to be done. She believes speed humps will protect the wildlife and pedestrians by slowing down drivers.
“People don’t read. I think the signage itself would be more obtrusive than it would a speed table,” she said. “It keeps getting kind of pushed under the rug and then something happens and it raises its ugly head again and I think we kind of get told things to pacify us but nothing’s ever really done.”
8 On Your Side asked Rao about speed humps.
He said when they were discussed in the past, they were considered severe counter measures.
“Now we’re gonna have to maybe rethink that,” he said. “That question may come back again and we may resurrect that possibility of at least two raised crosswalks, which would be what we actually call flat top speed tables.”
The reason he considers speed tables to be “severe” is because of the amount of traffic on Lake Morton Drive.
“To have 5,000 vehicles a day go over a speed table, that could cause some other problems. That could cause some congestion problems, backing up. We don’t know how motorists are going to react to that congestion and backup,” he said.
At the end of the day, the city and Young-Jennings agree, it’s important to preserve Lakeland’s signature, beautiful icon.
“This is something that really sets us apart from any other city or town in central Florida. There’s nothing like this. I mean, where can you find this? You can’t,” she said.
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