About 6 months ago the County Public Works Department spent about a month digging up South Miami Avenue from SW 14th Street to SE 13th Street. When it came time to resurface and restripe the roadway the CPWD only repainted the one and only crosswalk that existed rather then painting four crosswalks at South Miami Avenue and SW 14th Street intersection.
Nice crosswalk. How about crosswalks connecting all 4 corners?
I’m really struggling to understand the logic behind this one. The bucket of paint and the dirty paint brushes were already on site and they failed to paint 3 additional crosswalks? Lemme guess, just like the proposed cycletrack on Miami Avenue, we have to do some B.S. traffic study to see if crosswalks are appropriate and we have to wait until the school year begins to conduct this study right? We don’t have to reinvent the wheel and prove the obvious. There is always an excuse with the CPWD. Just do it and stop making excuses.
Pathetic
This is completely and utterly negligent on their behalf. What is so difficult about painting 3 additional crosswalks when you’re already on the job site? This was a perfect opportunity to make this intersection more pedestrian-friendly and the CPWD blew it!
Redonkulous
Can someone please provide us with an explanation as to why the additional crosswalks were not stripped? If money is the problem perhaps Commissioner Sarnoff should use the $70,000 from the Quality of Life funds he plans to put towards that worthless Belle Meade fence and instead use our tax dollars to make the Brickell area more pedestrian-friendly.
Shameful
Please send Esther Calas, Director of the County Public Works Department, an email asking her why three crosswalks were purposely left out of this project. (ecalas@miamidade.gov).
8 Responses to Another Lesson in Mediocrity by the County Public Works Department
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As long as we’re dealing with the kinds of governments and public institutions that we have in our county, we’ll always be dealing with mediocrity AND turtle speed. What we need are leaders who are ambitious, aren’t greedy, and know their stuff. The rest of country for the most part excels in these matters.
The tour de incompetence continues down South Miami Avenue. From 13th to 8th street, the heart of the pedestrian area of Brickell and Mary Brickell Village, there are exactly two painted crosswalks. Two! The one at S. Miami and 9th street by PF Chang’s has a badly faded one, but no stop sign, and parking that goes right to the corner, so pedestrians can not see oncoming traffic. These changes are so simple, it’s maddening. Is is just plain incompetence why we can’t have proper crosswalks, lane striping, and stop signs?
It’s really frustrating when we can’t get ahead because the people running our government agencies don’t know what they’re doing.
Not only do they not know what they are doing, but they are too busy pursuing their own [personal] interests.
Have any of you written to County PW or County Commissioner Suarez to request they make significant improvements to S. Miami Ave, perhaps implement the DDA bike/ped plan for the corridor?
http://bit.ly/rsVYEb
C: Why should we have to? Shouldn’t public works professionals being doing their job without constant citizen oversight?
The Miami-Dade Public Works Department (PWD) had an ongoing drainage, milling and resurfacing and striping and signage project on South Miami Avenue, which was interrupted at the request of the neighborhood merchants with the City’s concurrence due to the Florida Department of Transportation reconstructing Brickell Avenue North of SE 15 Road. Although both projects had non-overlapping maintenance of traffic vehicular routing, the merchants were concerned with the combined traffic impacts.
When we halted our drainage project, only one block was completed, between S 13 Street/Coral Way and S 14 Street. The project began on that block because it had the worst roadway drainage conditions. As a part of work stoppage, the contractor only replaced the single crosswalk at 14 Street that was originally present. The City has offered to continue the drainage work on Miami Avenue in coordination with their drainage project for the intersecting neighborhood streets.
We agree that additional crosswalks will improve Miami Avenue. Therefore, in the interim before drainage work is reinitiated on Miami Avenue, we will resume our effort to stripe crosswalks, stopbars, bicycle lanes and shared use “Sharrow” markings along this corridor between S 15 Road and S 6 Street without further delay.
We appreciate your bringing these concerns to our attention.
Thank you for your response Ms. Calas. Please let us know how we can help. We would be happy to work with the CPWD.