Construction on Glades Starts Tomorrow

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There is a sign on Glades Road indicating construction starts tomorrow, January 6th. We did some research and it appears to be a resurfacing project between 441 and Lyons Road.

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We expect there will be significant delays on a Glades for months, perhaps with some improvement after snowbird season. Many West Boca drivers already use Yamato and Palmetto to avoid Glades. This will increase and may cause problems on those roads as well.
This map from FDOT (and Google) shows what portion of Glades will be affected. They’re indicating it will start west of 441 and end east of Lyons.
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FDOT also included the following on their page for Southern Palm Beach County road closures.

Restrictions:
One lane will be closed, westbound, 7 a.m. until 4:30 p.m., with one lane closed, eastbound, 10 a.m. until 4:30 p.m., Tuesday through Friday.
Construction Open House: On Tuesday, Jan. 7 from 4:30 p.m. until 6:30 p.m., a construction Open House will be held at the Glades Road Branch of the Palm Beach County Library, located at 20701 95th Ave. S, Boca Raton, FL, 33434. Project staff will be on hand to review the project scope, and answer any questions. This meeting is open to the public.

Top 5 Stories on West Boca News for 2013

wbn-2013-hyper-localWest Boca News grew tremendously in 2013. As you can see from the image on the right (from Google Analytics) our readers are really hyperlocal. A very large percentage are located not just in South Florida, but in Boca Raton and especially in West Boca locations like Boca Raton, Boca Del Mar, Sandalfoot Cove, and Mission Bay. Deerfield Beach, Parkland and Delray Beach also make the top 10 list of reader locations. What do our users read? Here’s the Top 5, plus some extra details:
20131114-164650.jpg#1: Far and away our top story for 2013 was the motorcycle accident on Glades Road. We happened to pass by the accident scene and captured compelling photos. Then noticed the Vehicle Homicide Investigation Unit vehicle and got worried.
Fortunately the motorcyclist did survive, and he now appears to be actively using his Twitter account. That one story accounted for nearly 6% of the pageviews on our site for the year, and those views was heavily concentrated on the day we published it and the next few days.
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#2: The Walmart at Palmetto and 441 will reopen soon. We don’t know exactly when, or what it will be. But we know it’s coming. We have inquired and hope to find out more soon. Future articles about whatever Walmart puts in will probably be among the biggest stories for West Boca in 2014.
#3: Back in May we covered the opening of the West Boca Green Market at Olympic Heights High School. That article got more traffic in the summer. It still gets some views, but not as much since the fall started.
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#4: In November we did a story about the poorly laid out school speed zone at Logger’s Run Middle School. That one caught a lot of attention the day it appeared, but tailed off quickly.
#5: In June we reported that the Beall’s store in West Boca Square (near Chili’s) was closing. That was heavily read through the summer and continues to get a lot of views. We still hear people talking about what might take its place.
Bonus: Our top category was restaurants. We write a lot of reviews of restaurants in West Boca. The second biggest category was crime stories.
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Honorable mention: The second most read article was actually from 2012, Consumer Alert: Spalding Basketball System – 88461G. It was 3% of our pageviews.
And the fourth most viewed article, also from 2012, was about Hotwire Communications in Boca Falls. We guess a lot of people search for information about these and no one else has answered the questions.

What's Wrong With This Picture?

loggers-winikoff1This is the intersection of West Palmetto Park Road and Judge Winikoff Road, viewed from the southwest corner (Publix parking lot). See if you can figure out what’s wrong with the picture. If not, keep reading.
In the above picture you can see crossing guards and crosswalks. This photo was taken Friday morning while students are arriving at Loggers Run Middle School (which is on the southeast corner, or to the right of the picture). school-zone
What you can also see, if you look closely, is the school zone sign reducing the speed limit to 20 mph. It’s in the far right of the above picture.
The key here is this: For cars traveling eastbound (from Boca Falls and Boca Winds toward 441), the school zone starts after the crosswalks where children cross the road.
See the picture below:
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Let’s look at this on a satellite image (thanks to Google Maps):
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The red circle shows where the school speed zone sign is. The red arrow represents cars traveling eastbound on Palmetto (from Boca Winds and Boca Falls, heading toward 441). They cross two crosswalks at Winikoff with the 45 mph speed limit on Palmetto. It’s only after they cross those crosswalks that the speed limit drops to 20 mph.
We have school zones to protect children who are “outside or crossing the street.” There are no children crossing the street between Winikoff and Ponderosa. Most of the kids are crossing at Winikoff.
So wouldn’t it make more sense to have the school zone start where the blue circle is?
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We should note that for cars traveling westbound (from 441 toward Boca Winds and Boca Falls) the school speed zone ends about 100 yards west of Winikoff, well after the cars have passed through the crosswalks.

Serious Accident on Glades?

Update: We have identified the motorcyclist who was seriously injured in this accident. See details and pictures at the bottom of the story. He appears to have survived and is currently (November 15th) in a room at Delray Medical Center.

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UPDATE (5 pm): We spoke with the Sheriff’s “Media Relations” office. They mostly confirmed the details we had, though they could not be definitive. The motorcycle was traveling westbound and the car came out of a side street. They said the accident occurred at 3:30 pm (time confirmed by a resident). The motorcyclist was taken to Delray Medical Center. No information on the rider’s condition was available.

As of 4:25 pm Glades Road was closed westbound at Judge Winikoff Road, in front of Island Lakes. Eastbound traffic was also slowed. This is reminiscent of last month’s accident at Glades and Ponderosa.
It looked like a very serious accident with a yellow motorcycle on the ground, a car with multiple airbags deployed, and the Sheriff’s vehicle homicide investigation unit on scene with several other marked vehicles and officers.
Additional photos below. We will update when we get more information.

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We can only guess from what we saw but it appeared that the car was making a left turn coming out of Island Lakes onto Glades to go eastbound, and the motorcycle was traveling westbound on Glades.

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Update: Motorcylist Identified
West Boca News has determined that the motorcyclist involved in the accident was Jayson Acevedo. His Facebook cover photo shows him on a motorcycle remarkably similar to the one we saw on the roadway today.

We also found some tweets from relatives and friends identifying him. His own normally active Twitter page has been quiet since a few hours before the accident occurred.

West Boca News extends our best wishes to Mr. Acevedo and his family.

Traffic Incident at Glades and 441?

–Update – A reader comments (at bottom) that it appeared to be “radar traffic control”, i.e. a speed trap.–
We received a report from a local resident about a traffic incident at Glades and 441 from this morning:
This morning, Thursday, October 24, there were tons of Sheriffs Motorcycle deputies about – at Glades and 441, there was one motorcycle deputy who pulled over a car and they were in the last driveway going into the Mission Bay Plaza from 441 before hitting Glades.
Then there were two motorcycle deputies who pulled over a lady on 441 Southbound on the side of the road after the Mission Bay driveway and right before Glades. She appeared to be Hispanic, but I don’t know. When waiting at the light, I saw one of the deputies ask her to get out of her car and for her to lean against the trunk.
I was watching the whole thing, and it didn’t look as though she felt intimidated or threatened. It seemed as though she was having an amiable conversation with one of them. As I drove away, it saw one of the deputies look inside of her open drivers window. It looked as though it is possible that he reached his hand in, but I cannot say for certain as I was too far away by then (and I was looking through the rear view mirror).
And there was a 3rd pull over, a motorcycle deputy pulled a car over in the Publix/Home Depot parking lot driveway across the street on the northbound side of 441.

We did a quick review of the sheriff’s blotter and don’t see anything that appears to be related. If we find out anything more we will post an update. And of course, if any of our readers know something, please let us know, by Facebook comment or message, a comment on this article, or an e-mail to [email protected].