FYI Miami: June 5, 2025

 TRACKING AMTRAK: National passenger rail line Amtrak, which late last year told the state that it doesn’t plan to ever use a station built to its specifications in an intermodal center beside Miami International Airport because it’s too expensive, is still on the county’s radar, says the new head of the Department of Transportation and Public Works. “We don’t think those discussions are in abeyance forever,” Stacy Miller told the Citizens’ Independent Transportation Trust last week. “We would like to have that opportunity in the future, should it be amendable to all parties,” but “right now they are not moving into” the Miami Intermodal Center. Instead, Amtrak continues to end its Florida runs in a Hialeah station that it plans to upgrade. “The whole purpose of the [Miami Intermodal Center] was to get all these different kinds of transportation modes together,” Robert Wolfarth, transportation trust chairman, said in December, citing Metrorail, bus operators and a rental car center, “and Amtrak was supposed to be part of it.” 

PASSENGERS SLIDE, CARGO SOARS: Air passenger traffic has slipped this year while cargo traffic is booming, the latest report from Miami International Airport reveals. Total passenger traffic is down 1.67% from last year, when passenger traffic set a record of almost 56 million individual flights. On the other hand, total cargo tonnage for the year has soared 11.83% from last year – and the airport is prepared for the growth, with deals that will add more cargo-handling ability as Miami International nears its maximum cargo capacity. In March, the most recent month of publicly available data, international passenger traffic slipped 0.85% from March 2024 and domestic passengers declined 1.49%. At the same time, March international cargo tonnage rose 11.58% and domestic tonnage rose 17.78%. 

TRANSIT USE FALLING: Miami-Dade County’s transit system is losing riders at an increasing pace, with the most recent figures showing an 8.4% ridership drop in March compared with March 2024. The year-to-year loss was 5.6% in February and 2.2% in March. The last year-over-year gain was 2.2% last October. The largest March drop was 16.8% in the use of the free Metromover, was has been undergoing upgrades for many months as the county talks of replacing the system entirely. Bus ridership dropped 10.1% year over year. Metrorail use gained 2.4% after losing 1.1% in February. Despite the losses, total transit system ridership for the months was 7 million trips, which surpasses the 6.7 million trips in March 2019.

These are some of the FYIs in this week’s edition. The entire content of this week’s FYIs and Insider sections is available by subscription only. To subscribe click here.