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Front Page » Transportation » Progress of six legs of transit Smart Plan updated

Progress of six legs of transit Smart Plan updated

Written by on March 1, 2022
  • www.miamitodayepaper.com
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Progress of six legs of transit Smart Plan updated

The promise to improve Miami-Dade transit through six corridors of the Strategic Miami Area Rapid Transit (SMART) Plan, which the Miami-Dade Transportation Planning Organization Governing Board adopted in 2016, rolls on as state and local officials negotiate contracts, seek more funds, and design and construct phases of the six projects.

The design phase of the 20-mile South Corridor is 90% done and the construction phase 25%. The corridor’s design-build project means staff works on the design while the contract team in the field does construction, said Eulois Cleckley, director of the Department of Transportation and Public Works (DTPW) at the Feb. 24 Citizens’ Independent Transportation Trust (CITT) meeting.

In February 2021 the transportation department told contractor OHL USA to proceed on 800 days of work, and they are at about 379 days. “We should be in revenue service [by] Jan. 4 of 2023,” Mr. Cleckley said. “[For the] substantial completion we’re looking at 2023, meaning that the critical items from a construction standpoint will be complete so we can enter into revenue service by that timeframe, and our final completion date where all the punch list items from our contractor should be completed by April of 2023.”

The $368 million corridor extends from the Dadeland South Metrorail Station to the Southwest 344th Street Park-and-Ride/Transit Terminal and provides a connection between the Miami Central Business District and the Village of Pinecrest, the Village of Palmetto Bay, Town of Cutler Bay, City of Homestead and Florida City.

Mr. Cleckley detailed that the project is to have 14 center platforms for the electric bus fleet, enhancements for about 30 bus stops and intersections, and transit signal priority across the corridor that will give preference to the electric vehicles servicing the south corridor.

On the Beach Corridor, DTPW is in the midst of negotiations under an 18-month interim agreement with MBM partners, Miami Beach Monorail Consortium led by Meridian Investors and Malaysian casino company Genting, the only bidder to develop the project, and they are to end by April 30.

“As a part of those negotiations, the MBM team is responsible for performing pre-development work, and they’re about 90% complete,” Mr. Cleckley said.

In mid-January, the group gave the county a price update of $979 million, with $90 million in escalation and an annual availability payment of $117.3 million by the county to the concessionaire. “Pursuant to the interim agreement, the MBM group is to provide us with a third and final price update by the middle to the end of March, and at that point, there will be some decisions to be made in terms of if we’re in a position to advance the project,” Mr. Cleckley said.

The updated price exceeds the previously negotiated of $586.5 million for the Trunkline segment of the Miami Beach Corridor monorail. The projects run from the transit hub to be built at Herald Plaza to the multimodal transit hub at Lenox Avenue and Fifth Street in Miami Beach, and an additional transit station at Washington and Fifth Street.

The department has been working to get environmental clearance through the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA); it has been working with the Coast Guard, which is the lead agency for this project, and the aim is to get the NEPA approval by summer. “We’ve also received a class of action, which is essentially the level of environmental assessment that is necessary and for this particular instance,” Mr. Cleckley said.

The 11-mile East-West corridor along SR 836/Dolphin Expressway from the Miami Intermodal Center adjacent to the Miami International Airport to Southwest Eighth Street at Southwest 147th Avenue next to the Tamiami Terminal has as the locally preferred alternative Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) on dedicated transit-only lanes, approved in October 2020. DTPW awaits the class action determination from the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) by spring.

The department anticipates having the NEPA documents and then submitting a Small Starts package to the FTA to receive funds by summer, Mr. Cleckley said.

The Northeast Corridor runs on Florida East Coast (FEC) Railway tracks for about 14.5 miles and has six stations around the corridor to go from downtown Miami to the Aventura station that private rail service Brightline is now building. DTPW aims to begin engineering in April 2023, after selecting the private partner for a Public-Private Partnership (P3) project this summer and going through an interim agreement phase to begin in fall.

The project got approval to enter with the FTA into the New Starts project development phase in October 2021. Then, in January this year, they received the lowest level of environmental clearance that the project needs from a capital project standpoint, Mr. Cleckley said.

The Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT) is also involved in the corridors of the SMART Plan and is leading the Project Development & Environment Studies (PD&E) for the North, the Kendall and the Flagler corridors.

On the 10-mile North Corridor, FDOT decided to put the PD&E study on hold after consulting with the FTA until the outcome of a request for proposals issued in June 2020 is established in terms of transit technology and alignment, said Nilia Cartaya, Modal Development Office administrator of FDOT District Six.

Elevated heavy rail that is to serve the corridor from the Miami-Dade/Broward County line to Northwest 75th Street along Northwest 27th Avenue has a capital cost of about $1.9 billion, with operation and maintenance costing about $50 million a year and 7,500 estimated new transit riders per day, Ms. Cartaya said.

On the Flagler corridor, stretching from downtown Miami to West Dade via Flagler Street, FDOT plans for a demonstration project from 27th Avenue to Sixth Avenue by fall 2023. “This will allow us to obtain critical data to evaluate the benefits of a dedicated bus lane and then use those data points to better inform our locally preferred alternative for the Flagler Corridor,” Ms. Cartaya said.

FDOT’s website details that the department is studying use of Premium Transit and that modes such as Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) would be evaluated on exclusive transit lanes or reversible transit lanes.

In the Kendall Corridor, FDOT has presented a Corridor Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) alternative with non-exclusive lanes for buses as the locally preferred alternative, although the Transportation Planning Organization (TPO) has deferred final endorsement. The department is to put the PD&E of the project on hold until it gets results of the Flagler demonstration project so that it can revisit the locally preferred alternative in this corridor too.

Local transit activists have highly criticized the BRT corridor, with claims that it is not what riders have been expecting. “What FDOT is proposing is not what people have been waiting for, it’s not what people have been paying for the past 20 years,” Derrick Holmes of the Transit Alliance told Miami Today in October. “What FDOT is proposing essentially is to have buses stuck in traffic and calling it bus rapid transit.”

6 Responses to Progress of six legs of transit Smart Plan updated

  1. Cully Waggoner

    March 4, 2022 at 6:00 pm

    Well to start with, the SMART Plan is one of the dumbest things that Miami-Dade County ever came up with. Millions were wasted on consultants that had no idea how people in Miami-Dade actually get around. BRT (Bus Rapid Transit) is NOT what the Half Penny Sales Tax that we the voters of Miami-Dade County voted for. Extending MetroRail IS what we voted for and most of what the Half Penny Sales Tax was to pay for.

    The problem was the Half Penny Sales Tax created more than a couple of billion dollars and the Mayors and Commissioners, past and present decided to take that money away from mass transit and use it for other things, including the Underline, yet another really stupid idea that benefits only a very few, that it WAS NOT intended for. So, South Dade, the LARGEST part of the County gets the shaft again while the north part gets some more attention.

    I said this before and I’ll say it again. One MetroRail car carries more people than One Bus and most MetroRail trains are four and five car consists, if not more during peak periods. MetroRail travels faster than BRT. MetroRail does not compete with other cars in traffic on the streets like busses do. MetroRail is what we want, not more busses clogging our streets. MetroRail expansion is what we voted for and we got screwed out of it.

    Elevated MetroRail tracks over the Busway with stations at Pinecrest, Rockdale, Palmetto Bay, Cutler Ridge, Goulds, Princeton, Naranja, Homestead and Florida City are what we want and we deserve and what we paid for. South Dade is expected to be thrilled with new Bus Stops along the Busway that have no parking no connection to anything and are just generally useless. There are already Bus Stops along the Busway and they don’t work either. Making pretty new ones so our politicians can pay off developers to build them is not the option.

    • daniel

      March 7, 2022 at 11:23 am

      You’re wrong.

      BRT is faster than metrorail. BRT buses aren’t clogging the streets (they have their own road). Stations have BikeLids which incentivize using alternate transportation modes and there are still park and rides at SW 344th Street, SW 177th Avenue, SW 296th Street, SW 112th Avenue, SW 200th Street, SW 168th Street, and SW 152nd Street. More than enough spaces. The people were lied to when they were promised metrorail, the federal government wont fund ELEVATED metro through farm land. BRT provides the rapid transit service that so many people in South Dade have wanted and need and it creates the density needed for a metrorail extension. The stations are all made to be convertible to metrorail. And these aren’t bus stops, these are BRT stations that are way nicer than metrorail stations (metrorail stations don’t even have air conditioning). The current busway stops don’t come in comparison to the BRT stations. Really the only thing that you’re salty about is that they are using 60-foot battery electric articulated buses instead of metrorail trains. You probably dont even use the busway as it is today, and as someone who lives in Homestead and takes the 38 everyday, we are more than happy to have BRT coming.

  2. Roy

    March 6, 2022 at 1:28 am

    I visited the Tampa Bay area this weekend and did not see any fast lanes on I4, I75 or on I275. We have them in south Florida with some of the funds collected going to other parts of the state. Perhaps south Florida can keep all the funds collected in the area to help extend the metro-rail.

  3. Venustiano Zaragoza

    March 8, 2022 at 9:15 pm

    Cully you are completely right, I been living here in Miami for the past 20 years, I never have a car and the system of public transportation is getting worse, I been using it and has been less and less bus routes; the elevated metrorail extension from Dadeland to Homestead I think is never going to happen, why? Because our politicians don’t care about the working class citizens, I mention many times on meetings with city of Miami politicians about, why Dade County never use those thousands of miles of railroad to put a light train/tram? Their excuse is those railroads belong to other companies, or is too expensive; it is really sad the city invest money on things we don’t really need like the signature bridge getting built in downtown Miami, or that Underline thing been use only by homeless people, or even worse having all these trolleys for free, no wonder is not money for better public transportation; Brightline trains are useless and expensive (and also is not even a High Speed Train like the ones in Europe); anyway sooner or later our politicians they going to be stuck in traffic and they are going to pay the consequences of their decisions

  4. Armando Perez

    March 29, 2022 at 6:19 pm

    South Miami Dade had the rail line which was removed and the busway put in. They claim that the new stations will be built so that once the appropriate passenger density is reached, then rail could be put in, so they say. If you examine the plans for the new stations along the busway, you will see that their layout forces any rail line to be at grade and not elevated. Oddly enough, the original plan was to have an at grade line to Florida City from Dadeland south. They would have to spend additional millions upon millions to redo the stations to accept elevated rail. On the consultants and studies, the waste of tens of millions of dollars on this is obscene and is the outright theft of taxpayers money! The consultants will always be in favor of buses and never rail. Double tracking the south Miami Dade corridor would have cost half of what was paid to build the busway! The fix of the busway will cost as much as building a new at grade rail line. With what has already been spent, including consultants, the line to Florida City could have been built and the elevated line along NW 27 Ave could have at least reached Gratigny Rd. They then tried to pump up the idea that the CSX south Miami Dade County line south of MetroZoo to Homestead could be used for passenger trains. Instead, they are letting this abandoned line be overgrown with weeds and trees. If a highway is built on the right of way, then another rail corridor is lost. Similarly, the Ludlam corridor is also likewise lost because a rail line is removed. Officially, a hiking biking trail is to be put in the rail lines place. This is a waste because this corridor from Dadeland to the Airport and a connection to the Miami Airport MetroRail and TriRail station is if joined with the south Miami Dade Busway corridor the best way to connect the Florida City/Homestead area with the airport and the rest of south Florida!

  5. Armando Perez

    March 29, 2022 at 6:36 pm

    With what consultants were paid, you could have built some at grade lines! The waste has been monumental! After all, it is not their money, it’s the taxpayers! I voted for the half penny tax and so did everyone writing here! It should have been spent on what the people wanted! The smart plan was a big overreach and Mayor Carlos Gimenez was never going to keep his promise for more rail. He was the chairman of MDX for crying out loud! What he really wanted was to extend SR 836 to South Miami Dade and use the CSX right of way for a southern extension of SR 874. The power of the highway and trail lobbyists is very powerful and they pay good money and give perks to the politicians who do their will.

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