For those of you who will be participating in the annual retail ritual that is Black Friday, I thought this photo of Dadeland from December of 1975 would give you the warm and fuzzies. Gobble gobble.
Courtesy of the State of Florida Archives.
Archive for November, 2008
In Chicago, Thomas Lynch slammed on the brakes of his truck in front of some bicyclists in order to make them crash into them. Why am I posting this? Because he’s from Florida. Fort Lauderdale, to be specific. Read the article here. More importantly, read the 75+ comments from many people who thought the bicyclists deserved to crash. And we thought Miami Herald or Sun-Sentinel commenters were bad!
I’m surprised we don’t have more of this intentional harm around here, although I am pretty certain I experienced some last week. I was riding in an undesignated bicycle lane coming up to a red light, slowing down, when the passenger in a truck I was passing opened his door right in front of me. Needless to say I went down, luckily with little more than a scraped knee due to my low speed. Since the truck had just passed me and I was wearing a neon yellow jacket, I found it hard to believe that he didn’t know I was there. I was ready to punch the guy in the face but I decided to give him the benefit of the doubt. Next time I will probably call the police just to see if they’ll give the guy a ticket. They may try to give me a ticket instead, but it’s worth a try. So check your mirrors if you ever open a car door on the road. This is the second time I’ve been doored that way and I won’t let the next person get away with it, intentional or not.
The Bike Miami blog, your source for all things Bike Miami, has now moved over to wordpress. As a result, the site is much cleaner and better organized. Check it out here: www.bike-miami.com
Please visit the page often to get all the details for the next Bike Miami, taking place on Sunday, December 14th. It promises to be a bigger and better event this time, so keep telling your friends and family to mark the date on their calendars.
If traffic engineers and transportation planners were to learn one thing in the last sixty years, they should have learned that we cannot build our way out of traffic congestion. That is to say, expanding roadways with additional travel lanes only induces demand for ever more road space, which gets us back into the exact same situation of congestion.
At what point will the omnipresent negative externalities of more traffic congestion, pollution and noise cause the people of South Florida to revolt? Highways in San Francisco, Milwaukee, New York City and Boston have all been replaced with human-scaled surface boulevards. Do you think they miss their freeways? How about the traffic?
All signs point to no.
Well, according to the FDOT road building cabal and this Miami Herald article, the people of South Florida are not ready yet, but they may be getting close.
The controversial expansion of the Palmetto Expressway/ Bird Road interchange project chronicled by the Herald as the second to last in a twelve part plan for expanding the Palmetto Expressway. Specifically, Bird Road is set to get fattened to eight lanes, like a nicely plumped Thanksgiving turkey.
Commissioner Souto had this to say about the imminent Bird Road expansion, when it went from four lanes to six.
“It created an expressway in the heart of a community and brought more traffic, more speeding and drag racing along Southwest 40th Street,” said Souto, who still hopes to halt the project. “It eliminated the entire green space and tree canopy along Bird Road, making it one of the least attractive corridors in the county.”
Despite resident and Commissioner opposition, FDOT officials will likely persevere, albeit with a few concessions made to those affected property owners and area stakeholders.
The concession of choice?
Probably a nice series of beautiful uber-beige sound walls!
There really is nothing like ghettofying an already unpleasant, traffic dominated suburban environment with yet another expensive wall to protect resdients from what should not have happened in the first place. In this regard, I am under the long term impression that most traffic engineers have very little respect for their fellow human beings.
According to the Herald article, the expansion project is really all about safety. Alice Bravo, director of transportation development for Florida Department of Transportation had this to say, “It’s important that we alleviate congestion. When you have so much congestion, the congestion itself turns into safety concerns.”
May I counter this with the prospect of cars, when not stuck in congestion, will travel ever faster due to the wider lanes on Bird? How about residents attempting to cross 8-lanes of high-speed, freeway exiting and approaching traffic to reach Tropical Park? Oh, and those pedestrian refuge islands that help the humans across the existing six lanes, those will have to go to. In the name of safety.
With a price tage of $177 million for this project alone, might I suggest rethinking this “safety” measure for one with an incredible record of performance?
Mass transit. Not only is it more efficient from a life cost, energy, people moving perspective, but you never have to widen the tracks!
How about it FDOT?
Have you ever gotten grease all over a good pair of pants while riding your bicycle? Well, those disasters can now be at an end with Trek’s replacement of the bicycle chain with a carbon-fiber belt. They have two models, the 8 speed Soho and the single speed District. Read the AP article here. According to the article, the District is supposed to begin selling in December; but my local Trek dealer expects a ship date of March if you order now.
Personally, I’ve been considering a single speed bicycle. That and my many pairs of greasy pants have me drooling over the District. While I normally ride in biking clothes, changing is pointless for short trips around the neighborhood.
This letter, by my friend and co-worker Andrew Georgiadis, was published by the Herald yesterday. Please be sure to make your opinion known to the City of Miami commissioners - get their contact info here!
Miami 21 doesn’t stifle creativity
Re the Nov. 18 letter Miami 21 will undermine city’s uniqueness, by Bernard Horovitz, president of AIA Miami: There are flaws in his argument. He says that, “The proposal includes virtually no public participation in the project-approval process. It also promotes a homogenized design formula over architectural character.”Rather, the very design of Miami 21 was shaped by public input through years of well-attended planning workshops, or charrettes, that have occurred at every step of the way.Miami 21 does not regulate the design or style of fac¸ades. Therefore it does not inhibit the creative freedom of architects in the least. Rather, it governs the quality of buildings as they relate to the shaping of urban spaces and streets. An innovative and self-confident architect will not feel threatened by it.
Horovitz then lists Miami’s signature buildings, among them, Bank of America, Wachovia and Espirito Santo Plaza. While iconic and pleasing from a great distance, they are miserable and minimalist at their ground floors and do little to enliven the sidewalk. They fail to provide a high degree of transparency and mixture of uses at ground level. Espirito Santo Plaza, in particular, has a moat and windswept plaza in front that repels all but those that have business to conduct at the building.
Why can’t an iconic skyline also be pleasing and satisfying at street level? Duany Plater-Zyberk’s Miami 21 seeks to remedy such fundamental errors in urban design, not prevent excellent architecture from being built.
Horovitz also says that there is no requirement for presentation to public-hearing boards or urban-design reviews.
Because of the intense nature of public input, which touched every facet of the code, the approvals process can then become more streamlined. We design professionals who support the code are excited about the prospect of designing under such a visionary code that embodies not only the best practices in urban design, but also residents’ desires.
As a design professional who has analyzed municipal codes all over the country, I believe that Miami should be grateful that a forward-thinking planning department has enlisted excellent architects and planners such as Duany Plater-Zyberk to create a code that will give us an urban form that promotes sustainability while enhancing Miami’s character, function and diversity.
ANDREW GEORGIADIS, Dover Kohl & Partners, town planning, Coral Gables
Time lapse of a large office building in Canada’s parking lot. How many acres do you suppose are wasted to accommodate all these cars? This is a great visual representation of inefficiency at its best…
Our friends at Eye on Miami did some research and got the contact information for the various members of the Miami-Dade Planning Board. Please look it over and if you feel so compelled let them know how you feel. This project is a fucking calamity, and if you think there was a fight over a tiny piece of land for Lowes, get ready. I really hope that people understand what we have to lose - we need to save our agricultural land, and we don’t need a fake new urbanist project in the middle of nowhere. Just because you put a feather in your butt does not make you a chicken Jeffrey Berkow.
Write to your commissioner - let them know this is not ok.
According to this Miami Herald article, the Kendall Federation of Homeowners Associations is coming up mute on Lennar’s proposed Parkland Development, a 931-acre 7,000 home sprawlburg that requires yet another adjustment of Miami-Dade’s urban growth boundary. Perhaps the members of this Federation cannot bring themselves to be hypocrites. That is, the boundary was once moved for where they presently live. That, or like the Herald says, it is just plain apathy.
KFHA apathy notwithstanding, it seems the project is one step closer to coming to fruition, as the Miami-Dade Miami-Dade County Planning Advisory Board voted 7-3 today to recommend that commissioners move the urban development boundary further west.
Really?!
Apparently these “advisors” want more sprawl.
What a couple of weeks it’s been for Miami 21. After initially getting excited over the prospect of a final commission vote early next year, I was disappointed when the PAB voted yesterday to postpone the approval of zoning maps for the remaining three quadrants until the board can review changes that have been made since they approved the document last year. Then there was the recent Chamber of Commerce showdown between Bernard “I-can’t-design-my-way-out-of-a-paper-bag” Zyscovich and Lizz P.Z. His very vocal opposition to the plan, despite the City’s repeated attempts to graphically respond to his criticisms show one of two things: a) he’s not very bright, b) his ego won’t let him support the plan because he isn’t the author.
Bernard: you are doing the city a disservice by holding the plan back. Your criticisms (repeated here in a letter to the editor by the AIA president) regarding creativity and public process show a basic ignorance of what the code calls for. Yes the code limits what you can build (as codes are apt to do), but not anymore than the current code does. Public input is not limited by the code - it is supported by it. The streamlined process of approvals is for projects that are as-of-right anyway - these projects will never require public input because they follow the law ! (this is the same system we have today, except with more bureaucracy - not public input).
The AIA’s position on Miami 21 shows what an irrelevant institution it has become in South Florida.
“Look at Miami’s signature buildings: Bank of America, Alfred I. Dupont, Wachovia, Ingraham, Espiritu Santo Plaza. None of these iconic landmarks could be constructed under Miami 21.”
Thank god for that! You couldn’t come up with a better list of buildings that are the reason we need Miami21 (except for the Dupont building - which is exactly the type of building we want!) We want buildings that are beautiful and architecturally significant - but you can’t have good architecture that comes at the expense of the city. These buildings lack human scaled facades, active ground floor uses, and expose their parking garages. Miami21 addresses these issues by making people’s comfort on the street its priority. The real question for Bernard and company is: who are you fighting for?
Transit leaders and community residents got together this past weekend for a long overdue transit summit smackdown. Finger pointing and ’roundtable’ discussions were the order of the day in this feeble attempt at covering the collective asses of our municipal leaders (a term use lightly here). The absence of Transit Committee chair Dorrin Rolle was embarrassing, and shows how personally dedicated our elected officials are to this issue.
Many ideas were thrown around, most of which we have been championing for a while. (See Streetfoolish or The Week in Transit) Depressing though our situation may be, we have reason to hope that the Obama administration will prioritize mass transit, and help cities get federal dollars without having to jump through hoops. The FDOT quick starts funding program places a heavy burden on municipalities to prove transit’s ‘cost effectiveness’, while roads and highways are funded with far fewer obstacles.
Notwithstanding this possible policy change, what do we do now? The Alavrez administration contends that the PTP has resulted in two separate transit systems: one that existed prior to the PTP and the one that was promised to voters. Unfortunately, this is true, but the solution is not to pool that surtax dollars with MDT funds, rendering the Citizens Transportation Trust even more obsolete, but to make the CTT the steward of all transit funds (fare revenue, tax revenue, etc). Along with that, further untie the hands of the CTT to act independently. If we can’t rely on our elected officials to act, then someone has to be responsible for advocating and advancing transit in the region.
PS. Repealing the surtax is a bad idea. It doesn’t solve the problem of providing transit to our citizens, and will regress transit in the region twenty years. Our leaders over-promised and underdelived, always a winning combination, but is that a reason to cut our nose to spite our face? We are the ones who loose if the tax is repealed. Please write to your commissioner to tell them what you think.
The first annual Downtown Riverwalk Festival is set for this Saturday, November 22nd, 10am-4pm. For more info, click here.
No doubt, the economic peril facing Detroit’s big three is daunting. However, this overly dramatic video from gmfactsandfiction.com goes too far in predicting a total collapse of the auto-industry.
I am of the opinion that for too long Detroit has refused to innovate and diversify. Thus, I have very little sympathy for them, and in fact hold a fair level of contempt because those leading those corporations have been rolling the $156 Billion dice for too long. in effect jeopardizing the hundreds of thousands who actually make the industry work.
If a bailout comes, it must include provisions that not only make our cars more fuel-efficient, but also retools GM to allow ‘transportmaking,’ as suggested by this op-ed in this weekend’s New York Times.
With all the good news coming out of the bicycling community lately, I am sorry to share that the Miami Herald is reporting:
“A bicyclist was killed early Sunday when he was struck by an SUV while riding on a Southwest Ranches road, officials said.
The name of the cyclist, who appeared to be in his late teens, was not released.
Bryce Stuehrenberg, 32, was driving his Jeep Grand Cherokee east on Griffin Road when he struck the cyclist, according to the Broward Sheriff’s Office.
The accident occured just after 5 a.m. around 17950 Griffin Road.
The cyclist did not have any identification, BSO said.
Stuehrenberg and a passenger were not injured.
No charges have been filed. The accident remains under investigation.”
Anyone with information on the man’s identity is asked to call Detective John Grimes at 954-765-4321 or Broward Crime Stoppers at 954-493-TIPS.
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