Months after deadly car crash, Ybor City sees road safety upgrades

Months after a deadly car crash on Ybor City’s Seventh Avenue, officials in Tampa say they are taking steps to make the street safer. Mayor Jane Castor’s administration is resurfacing, adding parking spaces and reducing speed limits along the busy corridor, she said at a news conference Tuesday. The project joins a broader effort to improve road safety in the Tampa Bay region, which in 2024 was ranked the eighth-worst metro area for pedestrian deaths nationwide. But, Castor said, those measures may not have prevented the November crash that killed four people and injured 13 . The speeding driver, who was fleeing police , lost control of his vehicle and slammed into a crowded bar between 92 and 100 mph . “There’s not a lot that we can do as a city, as a government, to stop reckless behavior, individuals who make bad decisions, those that are really bent on destruction,” said Castor, flanked by police Chief Lee Bercaw, several Tampa City Council members and the city’s mobility director, Brandon Campbell. “But we can control some things, and that’s why we’re out here today,” she said. “We got together as a city and looked at what we could do to make Seventh Avenue safer than it already is.” The speed limit on Seventh Avenue will be reduced from 30 mph to 25 mph. Castor said the city plans to add retractable bollards, or vertical posts that can be raised and lowered from the ground to block or allow traffic. A portion of Seventh Avenue — from Nebraska Avenue to Nuccio Parkway — will be repaved with dozens of additional parking spaces. Several other Ybor City roads will also be repaved. The mobility department will fund the roughly $400,000 paving project. That work will be completed this month, according to a city news release. The city’s Community Redevelopment Agency is also replacing the street’s asphalt with bricks . It’s part of an ongoing effort to return the thoroughfare to its historic roots — and to slow speeding drivers. After the November crash, some advocates urged the city to close Seventh Avenue to traffic on weekend nights, in what would be a return to a 1990s policy intended to calm tangles of crowds and cars. Despite the community push, city leaders said they planned to keep the street open.Bercaw said in November that closed streets can cause crowds to form, “creating more challenging and unsafe conditions for everyone.”City Council chairperson Alan Clendenin said that month, “We have to be careful about reacting to a one-off, because if we react in a disproportionate way to what happened in one particular location, we neglect to see the larger picture.” Castor, who previously served as Tampa’s police chief, said Tuesday that she worked the midnight shift on Seventh Avenue as a sergeant when the city closed and reopened sections of the street to traffic. “There are arguments pro and con for both of those approaches,” she said. “But overall, to serve our public and to keep Ybor City safe, keeping Seventh Avenue open is the best approach.”