|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
Far too often, politicians fall for their own masterful visions of the future. Unfortunately, most of the time they’re plagued with nearsightedness and short spans of attention.
Like now.
Back in 2020, Miami-Dade County was awarded a $99.9-million grant by the Federal Transit Administration. The grant is funding about one-third of the cost of converting the current busway service from Florida City and other South Dade communities to Dadeland into a high-speed busway.
But for some politicians, this just wasn’t enough. While stomping her feet and throwing a tantrum, one local city official was actually incensed that the County didn’t have a transit solution on the table that would extend Metrorail a whopping 22 miles from Dadeland to Homestead – at a cost of about $3 billion! Yes, that’s billion with a capital B!
As it is, Miami-Dade County still had to find another $200 million for the busway, but here’s the rub: We’re not going to solve our problems just by squinting into the distance and with ideas that might work. We need to focus on solutions that will work!
Our current approach to mass transit is to move thousands of well-paid professionals from South Dade into downtown Miami, 20, 30, and for some 40 miles every day – each way. It’s time to flip the switch. Let’s start looking at long term solutions that focus on moving such high-paying positions closer to home.
The COVID 19 pandemic taught us that this old paradigm was broken, perhaps forever. Much to the chagrin of large scale office developers and landlords, people found that they liked telecommuting from home rather than having to get in their cars or hop on a bus or a train.
Law firms and other large downtown employers reaped a windfall during the crisis by letting go the expensive square footage of office space that they used to rely on to accommodate their teams of workers. The cost of subsidizing high-speed internet connections alone for at-home workers was miniscule compared to paying the rent on Class-A property space.
Here’s another no-so-fun fact for employers: about half their people who got to work from home during the pandemic said they’d sooner quit than be forced to get back on the commuter transportation treadmill. What if there is a better way?
There is.
The County holds the power to zone or rezone all the land to the west of the busway outside of the municipal boundaries of Pinecrest, Palmetto Bay, Cutler Bay, Homestead, and Florida City. What if, instead of focusing all its attention on moving residents into objectionably long commutes, we focused on stimulating job creation in the south part of the County?
I’m not talking about jobs paying minimum wage, like adding more Targets and Walmarts along US 1. Instead, use tax dollars – the same tax dollars that would be used on band-aid solutions like building and operating transit infrastructure that nobody wants to ride – to entice major employers into relocating good, high-paying jobs from outside our community into South Dade.
Not only would this approach allow for much more tolerable commutes but would also significantly drive a much healthier work/life balance for each employee. Seems like a win-win.
