With buses arriving, South Dade Transitway opening set

Written by Miami Today on March 5, 2025

The twice-delayed South Dade Transitway for rapid electric buses from Dadeland to Florida City finally has an exact opening date, July 21, the Citizens’ Independent Transportation Trust learned last week.

Of 100 electric buses the county ordered, the Department of Transportation and Public Works has accepted 17, interim Deputy Director Alex Barrios told the trust. The balance needed for the South Corridor Bus Rapid Transit service are due by mid-May, he said, “to be able to be put into service by our June-July date.”

The rest of the 100 are due toward year’s end, he said. Those buses wouldn’t be for the busway but for other South Dade routes.

The new rapid transit service is to have all of its 14 new stations open but not all of its new parking facilities, which are to be phased in along the 20-mile route. That corridor was once part of Henry Flagler’s Florida East Coast Railway and in recent years has been a busway that has now been upgraded with the stations, parking, bicycle paths and a new roadbed capable of handling high-speed electric buses.

The new transitway will carry two separate services, the express with limited stops along the way and an all-stop service that will not be rapid transit and will stop at 16 remaining stations from the old busway in addition to the 14 new stations.

“The limited-stop service stops at the 14 stations. They get preemption,” Mr. Barrios said, as car traffic at intersections gets a red light and gate arms come down as the bus glides past at up to 35 miles per hour.

“This the first in the country, a bus rapid transit system having gate arms,” he said. “We have a conditional approval from the FHWA (Federal Highway Administration) for their use, and within six months of their operation we have to go back, do a study, provide it to the FHWA to make sure that we get final approval to continue using them.”

The rapid transit corridor’s budget has remained a constant $368 million since August 2020 even as the deadline to finish on April 13, 2023, was first was extended by 327 days in October 2022 and then 250 more days last September. In September, final completion was listed as January of this year and passenger traffic was to start by the second quarter. It’s now the third quarter.

The trust did not discuss whether fare collection equipment compatible with county software would be ready when buses start running. That has been a lingering issue.

Bus Rapid Transit will actually see limited use, only in rush hours, in the morning coming to Dadeland from the south and in the evening going south from Dadeland. The county says it can’t give buses constant priority, thus preventing most trips on the busway from being true rapid transit.

A separate project is a new bus station at Southwest 168th Street with a multi-story parking garage and a local bus stop platform. That garage is running several weeks late, Mr. Barrios told the trust, because of a change in enforcement of the code for electric vehicle charging for fire. A change in the fire sprinkler class “is causing a material change to the building itself in relation to the number of sprinkler heads and pumps and water distribution,” he said.

The garage will have 644 parking spaces, restrooms, bicycle storage, a kiss-and-ride area and the EV charging. That $58 million project is now expected to be completed in August, he said, after the new bus service has started.