Transit Miami

I’m thrilled to hear that the Miami Roads Neighborhood Civic Association is filled with transportation and urban planners which are going to save Miami from its quandary to build a $200 Million streetcar. Here come our knights in shining armor from the single family home area of the roads, distributing fliers full of propaganda speaking about the effects of streetcars in urban areas. Give me a break!

First off let’s talk about the benefits of Streetcars. They are clean, efficient, and environmentally friendly forms of transportation. Running on electric power (which, ok, may have been created by fossil fuels elsewhere) they remove the highly unattractive diesel buses from the streets. When implemented properly, streetcars have been known to bring further urban growth and revitalization to blighted neighborhoods. Removing the buses from the streets also creates a more pleasant atmosphere for pedestrians, sidewalk café establishments, and pretty much any other outdoor activity. Streetcars run on tracks built into the streets and are typically equipped with an intelligent street light timing device which keeps the lights changing in their favor, to ensure that the vehicle keeps moving at a constant rate. Lastly, (though I can’t find the article I read which supports this) streetcars make sense economically, requiring less maintenance/fuel than a bus traveling the same route.

So, what do the members of the Miami Roads Neighborhood Civil Engineering Civic Association propose? Buses! Typical NIMBY response…I swear it’s like a disease that has spread north from the Grove. Buses aren’t going to solve a thing kids…It’s been proven time and time again that people (North Americans in particular) have a severe aversion to riding a bus. It’s mental, I know, so let’s spend the $200 Million on some more buses and psychotherapy instead.

Winsome Bowing, a Transportation Planning Manager knows what he’s talking about:

”We’ve seen through studies that buses don’t generate riders,” Bowen said. “This is about bringing more pedestrians to our city streets, which we have to have to make our downtown work.”

It’s about creating a new urban fabric for our city. The streetcar makes urban life possible and permanently establishes an alternative which negates the use of vehicles as the primary mode of transportation in our urban core. The streetcar isn’t a step forward, but merely a correction of the catastrophic mistake made in the 1940’s when the original Miami Transit Company streetcar was dismantled in favor of buses.