Jesse Scheckner
Miami-Dade’s bus-dependent residents will have to wait a bit longer for an overhauled ride on the South Dade Transitway running from Kendall to Homestead.
Members of the Miami-Dade Citizens Independent Transportation Trust (CITT), which oversees the county’s 22-year-old half-cent surtax, were told this month that bus rapid transit service on the route isn’t coming until June or July — four months later than previously projected.
Claudia Diaz of the county’s Transportation and Public Works Department said there are two reasons for the delay: Fare collection boxes are still being installed and tested, and gate-enforced crossings at intersections along the 20-mile route next to U.S. 1 must be synched with their respective traffic signals.
“We’re working through the gates and signals for a project of this magnitude,” Diaz said. She added that connecting signal cabinets on both sides of U.S. 1 with the gate arms and 14 new stations built for the busway is “a unique operation that we will be deploying.”
It won’t all be automatic, either. Diaz said that some of the “most problematic intersections” will rely on manual operations “during peak hours.”
Miami Today first flagged the delay last week.
Miami-Dade’s transportation planning board, which consists of the full County Commission and several municipal leaders, approved the South Dade Transitway renovation on Aug. 30, 2018. The cost of it then was estimated to be $243 million. Miami-Dade sought — and received — $200 million in federal and state earmarks.
It has since undergone a few changes and run into obstacles, including the pandemic, that delayed the project by three years and hiked its price by more than $100 million.
The county broke ground on the project in June 2021. Once completed, the transformed route is expected to provide Metrorail-like transit service featuring prepaid fares, level boarding and more than a dozen modern, covered stations. It will also be serviced by 60-foot battery electric buses.
Dubbed the South Corridor, the project is the first of six commuting routes targeted for mass transit upgrades under the Strategic Miami Area Rapid Transit (SMART) Program (formerly the SMART Plan), which local leaders adopted in 2016.
While the SMART Program is now technically in its eighth year, many of the corridors it highlights for upgrades have long been contemplated. That includes the North Corridor, now expected to feature Metrorail service to Hard Rock Stadium near the Miami-Dade County line, which has been studied in one form or another since the 1990s.
Miami-Dade residents are hungry for better transit options. A nonbinding question on the Aug. 20 Primary ballot found 78.5% of voters think the county should expand its Metrorail, passenger rail and Metromover services.
But fulfilling that wish will be pricey. Miami-Dade Commissioner Oliver Gilbert, the panel’s immediate past Chair and the current Vice Chair of the county’s Transportation Planning Organization, estimated this month that expanding rail service countywide will cost at least $6 billion.
Other routes eyed for improvements include the Beach Corridor from Miami to Miami Beach, the East-West Corridor from the Miami Intermodal Center to Tamiami Station, the Northeast Corridor between Miami and Aventura on Brightline-owned tracks, and the Kendall Corridor between Dadeland and Krome Avenue just east of the Everglades.
