$8 million bill that was trapped in tollways war falls due

Written by Miami Today on July 2, 2025

A multiyear fight to control Miami-Dade’s five tollways spilled over into late payment for a project that has been in use five years as a trust overseeing transportation taxes balked at a bill for almost double the agreed cost of the Dolphin Station Park and Ride Terminal.

For years, as the issue was whether the Miami-Dade Expressway Authority or the state-sponsored Greater Miami Expressway Agency controlled the roads, the county was unsure where to send its check for the park and ride terminal – so it didn’t pay.

At the same time, the $10 million cost ballooned to $18.2 million because the county added terminal bells and whistles, including electric vehicle charging stations, a transit facility gateway, an air-conditioned transit hub building, and parking management, surveillance and bus information systems.

Terminal construction at the Homestead Extension of the Florida Turnpike and Northwest 12th Street started in 2016 under the Miami-Dade Expressway Authority (MDX). But legal wars that ended just months ago put the Greater Miami Expressway Agency (GMX) in charge instead, and it’s trying to collect for MDX’s work on the terminal.

Last week bill collection fell into the lap of the Citizens’ Independent Transportation Trust, which had approved transportation surtaxes for the terminal and just before it met was handed a county memo asking it to approve $8.2 million more from those taxes for the higher cost.

The trust, which for years has decried late-arriving county requests, dug in its heels at too little time to review a call on the taxes that by law it safeguards and in the end voted not to approve that day, asking to hear the matter after it has had study time.

The county can’t spend the surtax money without trust backing, so it was slowed in paying an old bill that GMX is pressing to collect. That, in turn, prevents the county from unwinding lingering concerns from its resolved legal issues with GMX.

“There are some other agreements that are pending that we want to try to move all of them along,” Stacy Miller, head of the county Department of Transportation and Public Works, told the trust. “From GMX’s perspective, they’ve waited multiple years for these resources. They believe that this may influence – or the lack of progress on these may influence – other agreements…. Their request to us was to try to expedite this in order to allow other agreements between other entities within the county to move forward.”

Costs were one trust sticking point. “It’s almost twice the amount of the project that was approved” in 2016, noted member Peggy Bell.

Timing was the other concern. “It’s disheartening to see that an item this big is being given to us at the last minute,” Ms. Bell said.

“I just saw this today,” said trust member Robert Ruano. “It’s $8 million. The original was $10 million and we’re raising it by $8 million. That’s a concern, and a concern that I’m not really reviewing it totally.”

“This is just us coming back and paying for those components that we ourselves requested to be added to the park and ride facility that have already been completed and functioning for several years,” said Ms. Miller.

“There were multiple lawsuits associated with whether MDX was still an entity or GMX was an entity,” Ms. Miller said. “Those have all been resolved, so ultimately it was who do you write a check to as to who you determined was the entity you were still recognizing.”