Wednesday, May 29 — 6:00pm

Avenue D Jazz and Blues [...]]]> Right when we needed it, the good folks at The Miami Foundation are sponsoring a “Pre-Summit Summit” titled Transit Talk in advance of the Miami-Dade County 2013 Transportation Summit.

Wednesday, May 29 — 6:00pm

Avenue D Jazz and Blues Lounge

8 S. Miami Avenue

[Avenue D is another relatively new downtown bar/lounge representing bar owners' understanding of TOD better than politicians. By far the best way to get there is via the Metromover. Just get off at the Miami Avenue station using the northwest stairway. Avenue D is immediately below the station.]

A panel of of transportation planners and advocates will be on-hand to moderate and stimulate the discussion, including Kelly Cooper, Strategic Planner at the Miami-Dade County Office of the Citizen’s Independent Transportation Trust (CITT), the primary entity organizing the Summit. At least one official Miami Downtown Development Authority (DDA) should be present too.

One can also expect to hear commentary from Marta Viciedo, primary organizer of the successful Purple Line | U + Transit pop-up transit station which recently attracted a lot of attention to our community’s public transportation lacuna. TransitMiami alumnus Tony Garcia will also be present, representing his Move Miami-Dade transportation reform initiative.

To register for the event, please visit the registration website at:

http://www.miamidade.gov/citt/transportation-summit.asp

The Summit is scheduled to take [...]]]> We confess that here at TransitMiami we very rarely provide reminders for the many events we post. Here’s one posted a couple weeks back that especially warrants a reminder. Save the date: June 6!!!

To register for the event, please visit the registration website at:

http://www.miamidade.gov/citt/transportation-summit.asp

The Summit is scheduled to take place at:

Miami-Dade College – Wolfson Campus

Chapman Conference Center 3210

300 NE 2 Ave
Miami FL 33132-2296

There are going to be four break-out sessions in total, with attendees having to choose between one of two topics for the morning and the afternoon sessions. The two morning topics participants have to choose from are as follows (taken directly from the registration website):

Morning Session Topics

Morning Session A: Innovative Financing Opportunities: Transportation projects utilize a wide variety of revenue and funding from federal, state, local, and private sources. With funding for planning and projects becoming increasingly tighter, transportation agencies are employing innovative strategies to finance capital costs.

Morning Session B: State-of-the-Art Transit Technologies and Mode Choice: A key transportation issue for our community is weighing the trade-offs among the various fixed route alternatives. Discover solutions that offer diverse ways to efficiently develop Miami-Dade’s transportation network through ways including bus rapid transit, rail systems, system design, automated guide-ways, etc.

Afternoon Session Topics

Afternoon Session C: Establishing Public Private Partnerships: Understand the importance of new partnership efforts between the private sector and the various levels of government in the state. Also hear about innovative programs in several states and share your experiences.

Afternoon Session D: Corridor and Priorities Planning: The planning and development of multi-modal corridors — “the next big thing project” — starts with consensus among many stakeholders in a region, including the walking, riding, and driving public, private sector, government, and non-governmental organizations. Prioritization involves many considerations ranging from design and construction of infrastructure to community values in areas such as mobility needs and desired land uses. These themes cut across bus (bus rapid transit, exclusive bus lanes, etc.) and rail systems (underground, elevated, and surface alignments), as well as stations, etc.

Lastly, there will be a “Community Visioning Forum” from 4:30pm to 6:30pm.

The County seems to be taking this event quite seriously too. This could be it, folks! This could be the year that we start to build a broad, diverse, determined coalition of the progressive to finally push for an environmentally sustainable, socially equitable, and economically vibrant set of mobility solutions. It’s time we brought Miami into the 21st century. This Summit could be our chance!

Needless to say, then, our community needs your participation!

To register for the event, please visit the registration website at:

http://www.miamidade.gov/citt/transportation-summit.asp

The Summit is scheduled to take place at:

Miami-Dade College – Wolfson Campus

Chapman Conference Center 3210

300 NE 2 Ave
Miami FL 33132-2296

For the future of Miami, let’s make this event bigger and more momentous than any of us could hope . . .

The smarter ones are beginning to realize that the remainder of their political careers will be determined by their commitment to active transportation and livable urbanism here in greater Miami.

Tuesday, May [...]]]> Local politicians are finally beginning to get on-board with bicycle and pedestrian justice!

The smarter ones are beginning to realize that the remainder of their political careers will be determined by their commitment to active transportation and livable urbanism here in greater Miami.

Tuesday, May 21 — 9:15am

Board of County Commissioners Meeting

South Miami-Dade Cultural Arts Center

10950 SW 211 Street

Cutler Bay, Florida 33189

Thursday, May 23 — 5:00pm – 7:00pm

Titanic Brewery

5813 Ponce de Leon Boulevard

Coral Gables, Florida, 33146

TransitMiami invites you to take brief trip through time . . .

The year is 1973. The Dade County Public Works Department has just [...]]]> Forty years since the publication of a visionary transportation planning document, the shortcomings of Miami-Dade County’s transportation reality suggest that we lost our vision somewhere along the highway, literally.

TransitMiami invites you to take brief trip through time . . .

THE PAST

The year is 1973. The Dade County Public Works Department has just released its State Transportation Programs Proposal for Dade County 1973-74.

In it, a chapter titled Mass Transit (pp. 72-98) makes declarations of a new “beginning on development of a true multi-modal transportation system in Dade County”, in which “non-highway elements” are stressed to be at least part of the solution to Dade County’s burgeoning population and economy.

Indeed, there seems to be a fundamentally new consciousness — dare I say, a paradigm shift — reorienting the urban planning and public policy realms away from highways and toward mass transit.

Around 1973, this is the vision the County had for University Metrorail Station. Note the dedicated busway right along US-1. Note the wide sidewalks and crosswalks. Note the number of pedestrians. Note the relative “completeness” of the streets, save for the absence of bicycle facilities, etc. Compare this with this same site (US-1 and Stanford Drive, Coral Gables) today, especially in light of recent considerations to build an elevated pedestrian bridge crossing US-1.

The beginning of that Mass Transit chapter reads:

Metropolitan Dade County and the Florida Department of Transportation in recent years have become increasingly active in planning the improvement of mass transit facilities. With less emphasis on highways alone, programming efforts have been broadened to multi-modal transportation facilities, including airports, seaports, rapid transit, terminals for truck, rail and bus companies, as well as the highway and street system that serves them and provides local traffic needs.

There’s a sense that perhaps the mid-20th century notion of highways being the transportation panacea has finally begun to lose potency. A more holistic, more enlightened view has apparently begun to gain traction, one which posits that transportation corridors and corresponding land-uses perform best when designed to serve the myriad means and purposes of mobility, as well as the urban environment’s diversity of functions.

Here are some of the major mass transit proposals from the report:

• 53.7 miles of high-speed transit served by 54 stations,
• bus routes operating on expressways and arterial streets,
• feeder bus routes to complement other bus routes and rapid transit,
• mini-systems at selected transit terminals to provide local circulation and link traffic generating areas with rapid transit.

THE PRESENT

Fast-forward 40 years into the future. The year is 2013.

FDOT and the Miami-Dade Expressway Authority (MDX) — and the construction, automobile, and petroleum lobbies — actively and aggressively seek to expand highways.

Tax payers are being charged $560,000,000 (that’s right: more than half a billion!) for the highway expansion mega-project at the SR 826 (Palmetto Expressway) and SR 836 (Dolphin Expressway) Interchange.

Real estate developers eager to cash-in on building single-family cookie-cutter homes along the urban periphery in the west and south of the County lobby to transgress the Urban Development Boundary (UDB). Residential sprawl continues to lower the quality of life on the edges of the city.

Eager to keep its agency coffers growing, MDX writes hyperbolic reports emphasizing inflated demographic growth projections on these suburban outskirts, thereby seeking to further justify its southwestward expansion of SR 836 (Dolphin Expressway). MDX advocates for expanding tolled highways in order to generate increased revenues aimed at the perpetual expansion of highways in greater Miami.

Those same city-destroying developers-of-sprawl back MDX — as do all others in the broader network of profiteers — because they perceive as far too lucrative to forego the opportunity to cash-in on pushing the boundary of Miami further into the Everglades and into our fresh water supplies.

Even on roads that have long exhausted their traditional function as “highways”, MDX pursues measures to retrofit them so as to restore their obsolete highway-performing characteristics. This is epitomized by MDX’s “US-1 Express Lanes”, whereby the agency hopes to reduce the dedicated South Dade busways to accommodate new tolled arterial travel lanes for private motorists, as well as, most notoriously, create elevated overpasses (that is, create more “HIGH-ways”).

FDOT, in collusion with MDX, actively seeks to expand the tolled Florida Turnpike in far south Miami-Dade County.

Meanwhile, our mere 23-station elevated heavy-rail Metrorail system traverses a very linear (and thus limited), virtually-non-networked 25 miles, including the recently added, yet long-overdue, Miami International Airport / Orange Line extension. This is literally less than half the of the 54 stations and 53.7 miles of rail network envisioned in the planning document from 40 years earlier.

Miami Transit in Perspective. Image courtesy of Leah Weston.

Planned expansions to the Metrorail intended to create a true network have been scrapped due to a lack of political will to secure dedicated funding sources, along with an over-abundance of administrative incompetence and corruption.

Source: “Taken for a Ride”. Miami Herald: http://www.miamiherald.com/multimedia/news/transit/

After decades of false starts, broken promises, gross mismanagement of public funds, and outright political apathy, the time is now to regain the vision put forth four decades ago. The time is now to withdraw ourselves from our toxic addiction to the 20th century model of single-occupancy vehicles congested on highways. We must stop supporting those who seek to destroy our collective public spaces for personal gain through the incessant construction of highways.

The time of the highway is over. The time for “a true multi-modal transportation system in Dade County”  is now.

Has Miami-Dade County lost its vision for public transit over the last 40 years? — most definitely. However, one can find solace in the fact that this is not the Miami of 1973, nor of ’83, ’93, or ’03. We are no longer the Miami of the past.

This is the Miami of 2013. This is our time. It is up to us to set forward — and bring to fruition — the vision for the Miami of 2053 . . . and beyond.

All Aboard Florida is the ambitious [...]]]> Ladies and gentlemen: We present to you an important, visionary opportunity to support the creation of not only the first private railway network linking Miami and Orlando via the All Aboard Florida initiative, but also a recreational trail along that same 230-mile stretch!

All Aboard Florida is the ambitious project intended to link Miami and the greater Southeast Florida region with Orlando and the greater Central Florida region. It’s something we at TransitMiami are particularly excited about, and, frankly, you should be too!

What’s even more exciting, though, is the vision being advanced by the non-profit Rails-to-Trails Conservancy. With our (meaning the people’s) support, Rails-to-Trails hopes to make a small but significant modification to the All Aboard Florida railway plan: ADD A TRAIL!

That’s right, along with connecting Miami to Orlando with a much-needed railway, why not add a multi-use trail connecting these nodes (and everything in between) too?!

The Rails-to-Trails Conservancy is asking for our help in this regard with the following message:

Imagine traveling from Miami to Orlando by rail-trail!

It could happen, thanks to a new rail expansion project called All Aboard Florida. But your voice is needed to make sure rail-trail opportunities are included in the plan.

Take action now: Urge the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) to include a trail alongside new rail service as part of All Aboard Florida.

All Aboard Florida is a proposed rail connection between Miami and Orlando. This rail line will be America’s first privately built, privately maintained inter-city rail services since the creation of Amtrak.

The best part is that the 230-mile rail corridor also provides an excellent opportunity for trails alongside the railway.

Right now, the FRA is in the early stages preparing an environmental impact study of All Aboard Florida — and they’re accepting public comments through Wednesday, May 15. It’s the perfect time for you to speak out for the inclusion of rail-trails in the plan!

The window for submitting public commentary on this possibility is about to be closed, so be sure to submit your message of support for the addition of a trail alongside the All Aboard Florida railway as soon as possible.

Let’s make our voices heard: Write a quick, passionate, powerful message to the Federal Railroad Administration in support of a 230-mile trail from Miami to Orlando!

Here we go again… A few weeks ago there was another crash on Brickell Avenue and SW 15th Road.  This is the sixth incident in about 3 years that I have seen debris from crashes at the exact same location.  I’m not sure what FDOT and the city of Miami are waiting for, [...]]]>  

6th crash in three years at the same exact location. Brickell Avenue and 15th Road

Here we go again… A few weeks ago there was another crash on Brickell Avenue and SW 15^th Road.  This is the sixth incident in about 3 years that I have seen debris from crashes at the exact same location.  I’m not sure what FDOT and the city of Miami are waiting for, but apparently nothing will be done here until someone is killed. Sadly this will likely happen within the next three years.

Looks like the bench was launched about 50 feet.

The Echo Brickell project has just been announced and construction will begin soon at the very exact location where all these crashes have occurred.  This project will have 175 units with retail on the ground floor.  If the design of the road remains the same, we should expect a nasty accident with a lot of injuries once the project is completed. FDOT and the city of Miami have been put on notice. If nothing is done immediately both will have blood on their hands.

You can also send an email to FDOT District 6 Secretary Gus Pego and Commissioner Marc Sarnoff to see if they plan to do anything to address the design speed on Brickell Avenue.  I think it is evident that we have a problem here.

Florida’s Turnpike will host open house Tuesday, May 14, to discuss proposed widening project in Miami-Dade County

The Florida Department of Transportation, Florida’s Turnpike Enterprise, will host a public information meeting/open house to discuss the project development and environment study for the proposed May 1st “news release” from the Florida Department of Transportation & Florida Turnpike Enterprise:

Florida’s Turnpike will host open house Tuesday, May 14, to discuss proposed widening project in Miami-Dade County

The Florida Department of Transportation, Florida’s Turnpike Enterprise, will host a public information meeting/open house to discuss the project development and environment study for the proposed widening of Florida’s Turnpike from Campbell Drive (Exit 2) to U.S. 1 (Exit 12) in Miami-Dade County.

The informal open house meeting will be held from 5:30 to 7 p.m. Tuesday, May 14, at Miami-Dade College Homestead Campus, Building F, 500 College Terrace, Homestead, Florida 33030.

The public is invited to attend and express their views concerning the location and conceptual design, as well as the social, economic and environmental effects of the proposed improvements. Florida’s Turnpike Enterprise representatives will be available to discuss the project and answer questions.

The proposed 11-mile project will add roadway capacity to meet existing and future travel demand for the year 2040. [Really?]

For more information or to provide comments about this project, please contact Project Manager Henry Pinzon at henry.pinzon@dot.state.fl.us or 1-800-749-PIKE, ext. 3802.

Your participation is needed, Miami-Dade County!

• Do we wish to use our tax dollars to further expand (tolled) highways? 
• How is FDOT deriving its population growth and land-use change projections for 2040?
• Do we wish to expand highways to accommodate, intensify, and accelerate the already rampant suburban sprawl in the southern parts of Miami-Dade County?

“Miamians, please share this update. [...]]]> The following is an urgent update by Brickell resident Mark Batey on the crash that killed a pedestrian in Brickell on March 23rd. This crash happened in nearly the same exact spot where a female jogger was seriously injured on the sidewalk by a speeding driver in October.

“Miamians, please share this update. 4 weeks ago Ana Mares was killed in a hit and run in Brickell Bay Drive. I have been in touch with her sister, who is becoming desperate at the lack of progress in this case. Her family is beginning to receive the medical bills, which are huge, and apparently the person whose car hit Ana has no insurance.

Univision 23 released this video with new information. (Spanish)

The owner of the vehicle is named as Joy Terry Lee Clayton. She lives at 21455 87 court SW Miami Dade, and works at the legal department of University of Miami. She has got a lawyer and is saying that although the car that hit Ana is hers, she was not driving it herself!

Ana Mares was hit with such force that she was thrown 65 feet. Her sister is convinced she was already dead at the scene of the crime. Meanwhile, the person who did this is still driving around the streets of Miami.

The black Mazda shown in the video is apparently not the actual one that hit Ana. The one that hit Ana has some lighter colored panels (either for effect, or because work was being done on the car).
If you have any information, the lead detective can be contacted at joseph.kennedy@miami-police.org

Please share and let’s help get justice for Ana, who, by the way, was a cancer survivor.

Editors Note: We’ve been appalled at the lack of media coverage or official police, city, or elected official communication in response to this fatal crash. Brickell is the densest residential neighborhood south of New York City. This senseless death has not been given the attention it deserves. It’s reasonable to believe there were more witnesses that would come forward. Meanwhile, this criminal is still on the lose, driving around Miami. Please contact the Miami detective above if you have any information.

This just reinforces our call for Brickell Bay Drive to be given a ‘road diet’ to reduce the travel lanes to 2, and including a buffered bicycle lane with on-street curbside parking. This would dramatically improve safety conditions for drivers, pedestrians and cyclists while having minimal impact on vehicle traffic flow. In other words, make Brickell Bay Drive a Complete Street to better accommodate all users of this road. Brickell has undergone a transformation but our streets are still stuck in the past, making merely going about your daily business a dangerous endeavor. Our suggested reconfiguration of Brickell Bay Drive can be done with a few cans of paint – seems worth it for a road with such an atrocious safety record lately.

Also, please sign on to the “Stay on the Scene” initiative to strengthen Florida’s hit and run laws in response to the crash that killed cyclist Aaron Cohen on the Rickenbacker Causeway.

UPDATE May 3: The Miami Herald and CBS Miami are now reporting on the latest developments.