Transit Miami

On Wednesday June 14th I arrived at the Civic Center Station of the Metrorail a little after 5.30, there was a train sitting there with its doors closed and passengers sitting in it, I waited to see if the doors would reopen since it was just sitting there, neither did the doors open nor did the train move. Finally after about five minutes the train started crawling out of the station only to pull out of the station and stop again just a few yards out on the tracks. Later I was told by people on that train that they were asked to get off the train at Government Center Station and get into shuttle buses.

Back at the Civic Center station I stood there for about 30 minutes with no trains in sight or any information on what was going on, the security guards on duty did not have a clue nor did anyone else, let me take that back, somebody did because the public address system would periodically come to life with a female voice making some kind of announcement this is what everyone heard “Your attention please, your attention please, we are experiencing………….Okeechobee and Vizcaya ………………. ” Meanwhile people were coming into the station as shifts at the various clinics and hospitals ended. Both north bound and southbound platforms were crowded to capacity by this time. Finally, a security guard came up to the platform and started telling people that the Metrorail is shut down and shuttle busses will be arriving soon.

Memories from an incident not to long ago came back to me when Metro Rail and US 1 were both shut down by the Coral Gables police because of an ongoing situation in one of the apartments near the metrorail tracks. They had shut down the metrorail at peak hour between Douglas road station and University stations, so we had to get off the train at Douglas get on a shuttle bus that was packed like a tin of sardines and made our way at snails pace to University station. After riding for about 45 minutes we were finally on Ponce De Leon slowly inching towards university, anyway Ponce De Leon runs parallel to the metrorail and we could see that the services had resumed and trains were flying by us, 15 minutes and 3 trains later we were finally at University! With this experience flooding back, I refused to get on the shuttle bus, the smart thing was to wait it out, so I went back down to see close to 100 people waiting for the shuttle and one bus lumbering down towards them. To save time found a Chinese place to eat an early dinner and when I got back to the Civic center Station there was a train waiting and the doors were open!

–Priyanshu A Adathakkar