Miami-Dade County Commissioner District 7
Traffic in the Kendall community is harrowing. On average, the typical Kendall commuter spends one hour to one-and-a-half hours driving to and from work. Indeed, some of my own staff that live in Kendall have a two-hour work commute—and this figure does not include the exponential delays due to construction activity or weather conditions. For this reason, I can safely say that the Kendall commute is one of the worst in Miami-Dade County, competing even with South Dade commute times.
It is precisely because of the Kendall commute conditions that the Florida Department of Transportation (“FDOT”) is looking into transit solutions along the Kendall Corridor, a 10.7 mile corridor stretching from US 1 to Krome Avenue along Kendall Drive, of the SMART Plan.
In its Project Development and Environment Study (“PD&E”), FDOT is hoping to obtain ridership figures to decide what rapid transit solution should be implemented along Kendall Drive: (1) Metrorail, (2) Metrorail at-grade, (3) Light Rail Transit, or (4) Bus Rapid Transit(“BRT”). In deciding which solution is best, I have identified four factors that influence ridership:
- Speed of service;
- Attractiveness of service;
- Cost of service (fare); and
- Quality relative to other transportation options.
Despite FDOT’s focus on implementing rail services or BRT, the best solution along the Kendall Corridor is free rubberized mass transit, i.e. trolley routes. By offering highly attractive trolley services at no cost to commuters, more people would be enticed into using public transportation. We can see the effect of free and attractive trolleys in the City of Miami, where trolley ridership is at 4.6 million users yearly and growing. Furthermore, by increasing attractiveness and removing fare costs, we create a feedback loop effect as well; the more people use visually appealing, fare-free trolley services, the fewer number of cars will clog Kendall Drive, thus increasing speed of service.
Perhaps most importantly, unlike the implementation of rail service or BRT, free trolley services do not require contractors to tear up and reconfigure existing lane structures along Kendall Drive. This is a significant benefit when considering the value of trolley services because if there is anything we can take from the recent reconstruction of Flagler Street, it is that tearing up roads is costly. In fact, tearing up Flagler Street has caused great damage to nearby businesses in transactional costs, with many businesses struggling to make ends meet. Worse still is that when contractors tear up the streets, it is often nearly impossible to predict how long repairs will take due to unforeseeable difficulties. This is exemplified by the fact that contractors rebuilding Flagler Street are delaying their “one-year project” by 270 days due to unanticipated utility line work.
Intuition tells me that tearing up Kendall Drive to implement a mass transit solution would be a disaster similar to the Flagler Street roadwork currently under construction. Implementing a rapid transit solution would result in countless hours of commuter traffic delays and millions of dollars in transactional costs to the local economy, and to make matters worse, this is a cost that the community has expressed no interest in bearing. Additionally, at an estimated $607 million price-tag, the cost of implementing rail services is enormous. For comparison, purchasing thirty trolleys like those used in Coral Gables would cost $9.9 million—1.6% of the total cost of rail service.
Traffic levels in the Kendall community are unsustainable and it is undeniable that Kendall needs a valid transit solution that addresses the needs of Kendall commuters. However, we can reach our desired increase in public transit ridership by implementing attractive, fare-free trolley solutions. Best of all, by offering free trolley services, we won’t have to tear up Kendall Drive for years on end, saving Kendall residents many headaches. Intuition tells me that when it comes to the future of traffic in Kendall, commuters will travel by trolley.
Miami-Dade County Commissioner Xavier L. Suarez can be reached at 305-669-4003 or via email at district7@miamidade.gov.
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