Crystal River has been awarded $200,000 from the state to build two golf cart crossings over U.S. 19, with $100,000 set aside for each one. The proposed locations are at Fort Island Trail and near Three Sisters Springs.

Golf carts have been street legal in Crystal River since 2012, and they have become a normal way to get around the city. U.S. 19 has always been the exception. The highway is a state road, so any crossing needs approval from the Florida Department of Transportation, and until now the city has had neither the money nor the permission to build one.

"They will get us across 19 legally for the first time ever," City Manager Audra Curts said of the crossings.

The funding is a step, not a finish line. Curts noted that the city still does not have FDOT approval for the crossings even though the state has now provided the money. FDOT will approve only one crossing per year, and the second will depend on crash data collected after the first one is installed. That makes the Fort Island Trail and Three Sisters Springs crossings a sequence rather than a pair, with the first to be built serving as the test case for the second.

The city has not announced a construction start date and says it hopes to have a timeline soon. For now, the money is in hand, the two sites are identified, and Crystal River drivers who have spent more than a decade parking a cart on one side of U.S. 19 have a reason to expect that to change.