WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — Highway speeds could increase in Florida as a bill moves forward to the state Senate.

The transportation bill would boost the maximum speed limit on interstates and Florida’s Turnpike from 70 to 75 mph.

WATCH BELOW: Florida Senate bill seeks to raise speed limits

Florida Senate bill seeks to raise speed limits

Senate Bill 462, a bill introduced by state Sen. Nick DiCeglie from Pinellas County, would require the Department of Transportation to increase the maximum speed from 65 to 70 mph on four-lane divided highways in rural areas.

The bill would also raise the speed limits from 60 to 65 mph, where deemed “safe and advisable.”

Some drivers like Bernardo Nichele are in full support.

“People can go a little bit faster without putting everyone in danger, so I think it will work,” Nichele said. “Raising it a little bit is not the problem. I think the problem is people are distracted.”

Some said cellphones are the problem on the highways, but others, like Raymond Rawls, worry the speed limit change will only put drivers in danger.

“We have enough accidents now. If they want to do something constructive, hire more state troopers, write some tickets,” Rawls said. ”But adding speed, you might as well give an arsonist a match.”

There are at least 18 states that have maximum speeds of 75 mph. The bill must pass two committees before coming to the full Senate for a vote.

Pete Davidson and his girlfriend, Elsie Hewitt, were spotted cooling off on a casual outing in New York City after getting hot and heavy in Florida.

The comedian and the model stepped out with several bags in tow while waving down a black SUV in Brooklyn on Saturday, according to photos obtained by Page Six.

Davidson braved the wind in a hoodie, jacket and jeans, while Hewitt bundled up in a gray sweatsuit set, a scarf and boots.

They kept a low profile and hid behind sunglasses while walking through the street.

Davidson, 31, and Hewitt, 29, appeared to have landed in the Big Apple after they were photographed packing on the PDA in Palm Beach, Fla., on March 15.

Per photos obtained by the Daily Mail, the couple couldn’t keep their hands off each other during the beach getaway.

They appeared head over heels while locking lips and tongues in the ocean.

Page Six exclusively revealed that the “Saturday Night Live” alum and the influencer were dating.

An insider told us Hewitt was “different from anybody else he’s ever dated.”

“Although things are new for Pete, he really likes this woman,” our source said. “She respects Pete and his desire for privacy.”

We also learned that Davidson’s family “approve of this relationship and love seeing Pete so happy.”

On Saturday, the duo hard launched their relationship on Instagram with Hewitt sharing a video of the actor in a white bathrobe.

Hewitt has famously been linked to Jason Sudeikis, Ryan Phillippe and Selena Gomez’s fiancé, Benny Blanco.

Davidson, meanwhile, has dated a slew of high-profile people, including Kate Beckinsale, Kim Kardashian and Ariana Grande.

The “Suicide Squad” actor, however, recently told W Magazine that he wanted to be known as more than a “f–king loser who just dates people.”

ST. AUGUSTINE, Fla. (AP) — Lori Matthias and her husband had tired of Atlanta traffic when they moved to St. Augustine, Florida, in 2023. For Mike Waldron and his wife, moving from the Boston area in 2020 to a place that bills itself as “the nation’s oldest city” was motivated by a desire to be closer to their adult children.

They were among thousands of white-collar, remote workers who migrated to the St. Augustine area in recent years, transforming the touristy beach town into one of the top remote work hubs in the United States.

Matthias fell in love with St. Augustine’s small town feeling, trading the hour-long commute she had in Atlanta for bumping into friends and acquaintances while running errands.

“The whole pace here is slower and I’m attracted to that,” said Matthias, who does sales and marketing for a power tool company. “My commute is like 30 steps from my kitchen to my office. It’s just different. It’s just relaxed and friendly.”

Centuries before becoming a remote work hub, the St. Augustine area was claimed by the Spanish crown in the early 16th century after explorer Juan Ponce de Leon’s arrival. In modern times, it is best known for its Spanish architecture of terra cotta roofs and arched doorways, tourist-carrying trollies, a historic fort, an alligator farm, lighthouses and a shipwreck museum.

A population boom driven by the pandemic

In St. Johns County, home to St. Augustine, the percentage of workers who did their jobs from home nearly tripled from 8.6% in 2018 to almost 24% in 2023, moving the northeast Florida county into the top ranks of U.S. counties with the largest share of people working remotely, according to U.S. Census Bureau figures.

Only counties with a heavy presence of tech, finance and government workers in metro Washington, Atlanta, Austin, Charlotte and Dallas, as well as two counties in North Carolina’s Research Triangle, had a larger share of their workforce working from home. But these were counties much more populous than the 335,000 residents in St. Johns County, which has grown by more than a fifth during this decade.

Scott Maynard, a vice president of economic development for the county’s chamber of commerce, attributes the initial influx of new residents to Florida’s lifting of COVID-19 restrictions in businesses and schools in the fall of 2020 while much of the country remained locked down.

“A lot of people were relocating here from the Northeast, the Midwest and California so that their children could get back to a face-to-face education,” Maynard said. “That brought in a tremendous number of people who had the ability to work remotely and wanted their children back in a face-to-face school situation.”

Public schools in St. Johns County are among the best in Florida, according to an annual report card by the state Department of Education.

Surging popularity comes at a price

The influx of new residents has brought growing pains, particularly when it comes to affordable housing since many of the new, remote workers moving into the area are wealthier than locals and able to outbid them on homes, officials said.

Many essential workers such as police officers, firefighters and teachers have been forced to commute from outside St. Johns County because of rising housing costs. The median home price grew from $405,000 in 2019 to almost $535,000 in 2023, according to Census Bureau figures, making the purchase of a home further out of reach for the county’s essential workers.

Essential workers would need to earn at least $180,000 annually to afford the median price of a home in St. Johns County, but a teacher has an average salary of around $48,000 and a law enforcement officer earns around $58,000 on average, according to an analysis by the local chamber of commerce.

“What happened was a lot of the people, especially coming in from up North, were able to sell their homes for such a high value and come here and just pay cash since this seemed affordable to them,” said Aliyah Meyer, an economic researcher at the chamber of commerce. “So it kind of inflated the market and put a bit of a constraint on the local residents.”

Waldron, a sales executive in the health care industry, was able to sell his Boston home at the height of the pandemic and purchase a three-bedroom, two-bath home in a gated community by a golf course outside St. Augustine where “things really worked out to be less expensive down here.”

The flexibility offered by fast wireless internet and the popularity of online meeting platforms since the start of the pandemic also helped.

“If I was still locked in an office, I would not have been able to move down here,” Waldron said.

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Follow Mike Schneider on the social platform Bluesky: @mikeysid.bsky.social