South Dade bus rapid transit coming ‘sometime’ in 2025

The trust that approves transportation tax spending and is one of three funders of the first new Miami-Dade rapid transit corridor asked last week when South Dade’s bus rapid transit will finally open and was told only sometime “in the first part of 2025.”

County transportation head Eulois Cleckley could not be pinned down to a narrower time range when passengers will be able to board the new 20.5-mile service between Dadeland and Homestead.

Citizens’ Independent Transportation Trust members, who had approved $101 million of the half-percent transportation sales tax receipts for the bus rapid transit project, reluctantly agreed in March to push forward with the service although they cited distress that the public will get far less than was promised when the trust agreed to funding.

That promise was that service would not have to stop for cars crossing the transitway. The county instead planned three hours a day of preemption of stops for cars going north and three hours going south, and then only on weekdays.

The work on the $368 million design-build contract for the system was 82% complete as of this March, the trust was told last week by Josiel Ferrer-Diaz, the Department of Transportation and Public Works chief operations and maintenance officer.

Foundations are complete, the pavement is in place, gate assemblies are going up at intersections and are being actively tested, transportation signal controllers and mast arms rise along the corridor, and all stations are in construction, he said.

“We are happy to say that we have power actually at 11 out of the 14 stations,” Mr. Ferrer-Diaz said.

Stations are also showing their colors – “colored lighting that is part of the vestibule” and is part of the $1.9 million Art in Public Places spending on the transitway, he said.

Along the route a 645-car, five-level parking garage is being completed at Southwest 168th Street, he said. The garage includes restrooms, bike storage, a kiss-and-ride area and electric vehicle charging stations, he said.

The permanent electric power due to go on in the garage building this month is crucial, he said, because the elevator there can’t be installed and tested without the power. Completion of that structure is now due in November.

The department, he said, plans to start accepting others of the 14 stations this month and to continue that in the fall, with testing of those stations “right after that.”