The Ocala City Council held a work session on May 12, 2026, at 5:00 PM to discuss three major topics: the Safe Streets for All plan, the Transportation Improvement Plan (TIP), and an update on curbside recycling changes. Staff presented detailed proposals and progress reports, and council members provided feedback and direction on next steps.
Mr. Marciano. Here. Ms. Dreyer. Here. Mr. Mansfield? Here. Mr. Musley. Here. Mr. Bathay. Here. Will you provide us with the public notice? Yes, the May twelfth, two thousand twenty-six City Council work session was publicly noticeed on Did I say May six? I mean the City Council work session, May twelfth, two thousand twenty-six was publicly noticed on May sixth, two thousand twenty-six on the City of Ocala's website. Thank you. Our topics of discussion today is uh for A is safe streets for all. Yes, sir. Safe Streets for All, and then we'll do our transportation improvement plan and recycling update. Um, let you know where we are, we have those times so that we have we can get this all done in an hour with questions. Um we will begin if you'd like. Yes, sir. Thank you. This builds upon, it's meant to build upon the O'Calamarian TPO's uh commitment to zero action plan, and but focus on the local streets within the city of Ocala. And there's really two purposes to this project. Uh, first is to develop a local road safety plan, including the development of a high injury network, and second is to develop a citywide speed management and traffic calming plan. As you probably remember, funding for the project was obtained through a safe streets and roads for all twenty twenty-three grant for planning and demonstration and supplemental planning activities. 80% of the funding was obtained through this grant, and the city provided the other 20% of the funds. There's six project tasks, including crash analysis, research and literature review. We had extensive public involvement, development of the local road safety plan, and the speed management and traffic calming plan. So this study analyzed crash data for the five years between 2020 and 2024. However, we did take a look at the fatal and severe injury crashes between 2014 to 2024. We were looking at the crash trends. And there was a spike in serious injury crashes in 2018. But there's been a decline since, so that's very good news. And then up in the upper right, looking at the age distribution of crashes, this is just 2024. Those age 65 and up are experiencing the most fatal and severe injury crashes within the city. In 2024, there were still 53 serious injuries and 19 fatalities. And then looking at the fatal and severe injury emphasis areas, we see that the City of Ocala intersections are the top emphasis area for fatal and severe injury crashes, followed by pedestrian and bicycle crashes, and then impaired driving. And then going beyond, we checked the 2025 and 2026 crashes to date just to see how we're doing. In 2025, there were still 53 serious injury crashes. 2026 so far, there are 11 serious injuries and four fatalities to date. So KSI crashes, those are crashes that result in someone being either killed or seriously injured. So from here I'm going to be calling that KSI. So looking at the KSI crashes within the city by crash type, left turns have the highest number of KSI crashes, followed by rear-end crashes. However, the highest number of fatal crashes is with the pedestrians. Looking at lighting condition, we had 54.6% of all fatal crashes and 42.1% of all KSI crashes occurred during non-daylight hours.