VOLUSIA COUNTY, Fla. — When the manatees come to Blue Springs State Park, so do the crowds and traffic.

What You Need To Know

  • Traffic backups are common during manatee season at Blue Springs State Park

  • Don Shelton says it’s difficult to get home on French Avenue

  • Volusia County is working with Orange City, the sheriff’s office and the state park to figure out options to reduce backups

Don Shelton wrote into Traffic Inbox because the backups can extend for miles on French Avenue in the Orange City area.

“When the manatees come in, people want to go see them,” Shelton said.

The westbound backups prevent him from getting home.

“I think an hour, an hour forty minutes has been the longest I’ve been stuck in the traffic,” Shelton said.

Shelton is concerned about first responders being able to access his neighborhood if there was an emergency.

“If you had a fire, the way this traffic gets backed up, it’d be really hard for fire trucks to come down and make all the turns and stuff with the way traffic is bunched,” he said.

Shelton is not against the manatees or the crowds that want to see them. But he wishes there was some way to relieve the backups to the Blue Springs State Park entrance.

“Maybe there was something in the works to relieve the pressure, because people up and down French (Avenue) can’t get in and out,” he said.

Spectrum News 13 reached out to Volusia County, Orange City, the Volusia County Sheriff’s Office and Blue Springs State Park. Traffic Expert Jerry Hume found out is that this has been a problem for a while, but there’s still no solution.

A Volusia County spokesperson said officials are willing to work with both Orange City and the State Park to figure out other options to improve traffic.

The Orange City Council is in favor of relieving congestion by building the Westside Parkway, which was a proposed bypass around Orange City that was under consideration back in 2006. The county says the recession killed those plans.

The Volusia County Sheriff’s Office says they’ve had preliminary talks about alternate traffic patterns and possible traffic overflow options, but nothing definitive yet.

Blue Springs State Park has tried alleviating some of the congestion by queuing cars off French Avenue. That queueing has helped a little, Shelton said, but not enough.

“It’s aggravating when you’re trying to get home and you’ve got something to do or you are planning an event at your house. You can’t really plan anything,” he said.

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