Drivers on Southern Boulevard next to President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club are encountering a new feature: a traffic signal.
Motorists in each direction on Southern at the south gate to Trump’s 17-acre estate could be stopped by the signals, each of which has a yellow and red light along with a mast arm that lowers over the road.
The signals were installed on Oct. 13 “as part of law enforcement activity,” a spokesperson for the Florida Department of Transportation confirmed to the Palm Beach Daily News.
The U.S. Secret Service worked with FDOT to assess that area, which is where vehicles from the Bath & Tennis Club’s west parking lot travel across Southern Boulevard to the Mar-a-Lago property after undergoing security screening, a Secret Service spokesperson said.
The traffic signals are designed to increase visibility and safety for pedestrians, drivers and the law enforcement agents working in that area, the Secret Service spokesperson said.
The devices are safer than having people step into the road to stop traffic, the spokesperson said.
Palm Beach resident Daniel Fairbanks shared his frustration about the signal at the Town Council’s Oct. 14 meeting. Eastbound traffic on Southern Boulevard at 7:30 a.m. that day was backed up to Dixie Highway in West Palm Beach, he said.
He noticed that after vehicles moved from the parking lot across to Mar-a-Lago, the traffic signal’s control arm remained down for about a minute, adding to the congestion, Fairbanks said.
“There’s got to be a better, efficient way” to move traffic between the Bath & Tennis lot and Mar-a-Lago, he said.
FDOT consultant Mel Pollock, senior project engineer with The Corradino Group, told the council during his presentation about FDOT’s pair of State Road A1A projects in town that he noticed the traffic signals that morning.
Council President Pro-Tem Lew Crampton asked Pollock to provide feedback “to the powers that be.”
“Have them evaluate the public benefit from ferrying a few folks out of the Secret Service parking lot, which is actually owned by the Bath & Tennis Club, across a little street against a mile and a half parade of cars and little white trucks, citizens who are waiting for that to happen,” he said. “Because that does not work very well, at least not right now.”
Kristina Webb is a reporter for Palm Beach Daily News, part of the USA TODAY Florida Network. You can reach her at kwebb@pbdailynews.com. Subscribe today to support our journalism.

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