Traffic & Safety

St. Armands Key is a destination in and of itself, as well as a traffic chokepoint:  you must travel through St. Armands to get back and forth between mainland Sarasota and Lido Beach and Longboat Key.

St. Armands is a small island shared by approximately 200 houses, 50 condos, an outdoor, pedestrian shopping district with approximately 150 shops and eateries, a Lutheran church, and a park that hosts various special events.  But, it is also the only direct way to reach Lido and Longboat Keys by vehicle from downtown.  This means that the residents who are out for a walk, the visitors who are shopping and dining and crossing over to the park, and the people attending a church service all have to share the island's roadways with the vehicular traffic from all the residents, visitors, guests, employees, contractors and service providers going to and from Lido and Longboat, which offer beaches, parks, marinas, hotels and clubs as attractions.  

Many consider the roadways through St. Armands to already be broken because the Circle becomes practically impassible certain hours of the day in-season, especially on a good beach day.  There is also the drawbridge to Longboat that has to be raised for sail boats periodically and which can lead to traffic back-ups all the way through the Circle.  These are inconveniences at best and a public safety issue at worst:  pedestrians must exercise extreme caution and emergency vehicles may have difficulty getting through.  

The worst traffic weeks of the year tend to correspond to school vacations:

• The week between Christmas and New Year 
• Presidents' Day week (February)
• St. Patrick's Day week (March)
• The weeks before and after Easter

Holiday weekend evenings in the summer can also be bad traffic times (e.g. Memorial Day, 4th of July).