Miami-Dade Transit is launching a mini PR campaign aimed at the anticipated completion of Airport Link, the 2.4 mile extension of the Metrorail from the existing Earlington Heights Station to the Miami Intermodal Center (just east of the airport). MDT officials held a public meeting on the project last night to mark the halfway construction of the new line, and good for them. They don’t have many opportunities to celebrate. On the heels of the colossal failure of the PTP to deliver even minor gains in transit ridership (at a cost of over $1 Trillion) MDT officials probably feel like they have to squeeze every last bit of positive press out of this project. After the recent official abandonment of the Orange Line Expansion, officials and citizens alike are not going to see premium transit expansion in Dade County for a long time.
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While I applaud the progress on the project, am I alone in thinking – why does it take 3 full years to build 2.4 miles of elevated track? Perhaps someone with an engineering background can shine some light on this one, but the timeline seems a little long.
Great question Thomas. I am also similarly baffled by the slow progress on this. Even if our elected officials wanted to spend money on transit, it would take 50 years to build a half-way decent system.SIgh.
Based on a presentation I saw at a CPAP meeting, a big part of the reason is that a number of the spans are too long to be pre-fabbed, trucked in, and lifted into place. They are using a special machine that molds the concrete into long spans a few inches at a time up in the air.
Among the 3 South Florida agencies (Miami Dade, Broward, and Tri-Rail), Miami Dade is the cream of the crop, Tri-Rail the worst. The biggest problem I see is that the agencies are fixated on big fixes (million dollars+) and have almost no orientation towards the relatively cheap fixes that annoy, frustrate, and piss off users. Nothing will change until all these agencies begin to hold monthly/quarterly meetings where people can tell them how to improve service. (Sorry politicians, a once a year “transit meeting” doesn’t cut it.) Ideally, those meetings would take place on a traveling Metrorail car, a Tri-Rail passenger coach, or multiple Broward buses. There is no way upper management can discover what’s wrong until they start to do that.
I’m in school studying transportation engineering. There are a lot of reasons why it takes so long for transportation projects to be completed. One major reason is materials.Some of the materials are not made in south florida. Sometimes there made in other parts of the country even around the world and has to be shipped or exported. When your shipping ans exporting, it can takes weeks for it to arrive.Also you run in to problems like material shortages like steele, and concrete. For example, if they need they need 50 pieces of custom made steel for foundation work, It can take days or weeks for it to be shipped or driven down from up north. A 2nd reason it takes so long is due to the time of day and weather. They can’t close most major roads due to the high traffic in the day time and most work must be done at night.Welding and other work can’t be done in the day, and sometimes the type of concrete used can take days to to harden before you can place anything on them. Some concrete can’t even be poured if the tempature is to cold or windy. So those are some of the reasons major projects take so long.