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Although some say love it or leave it, I am still not ready to depart from my beloved Miami.
There are so many wonderful aspects in this magic city: winter weather, eternal sunshine, beach, festivals, beautiful people, salsa, etc. Why would anyone (unafraid of Spanish) leave?
I’m afraid the answer lies in one word: traffic! This morning, for the first time, the traffic barriers along the South Miami-Dade Busway seemed to be operating. And so I say this.
Even though this advancement is occurring 25 years too late, nevertheless, it is a sign of progress. That said, I expect it won’t take long for Pinecrest’s and Palmetto Bay’s driving residents to force the local government to pull the plug. After all, we love our “freedom and independence,” and only poor people and maids ride the bus.
In Miami, we don’t speak truth to power, we speak power to truth. I have wondered how our streets are named and numbered and came up with this warped theory. It is because it takes 88 minutes to get from Kendall Drive to Flagler and 157 minutes to get from 157th Avenue in West Kendall to downtown. Commuting by car in Miami feels like a twice a day colonoscopy.
Driving at virtually any hour has become a feat of insurmountable effort and driving ingenuity. Everyone is best friends with their navigation systems, and no side street is spared from zigzagging. Nobody escapes the gridlock which occurs virtually anytime between 8 a.m. and midnight on most every major road. There’s no relief on US1. There’s no relief on the Palmetto. There’s no relief on the Dolphin. There’s no relief on 95. There’s no relief on the turnpike. Driving to Miami Beach or Key Biscayne requires more careful planning than we do to escape weddings or prepare for retirement.
The biggest boondoggle of them all is the spectacularly horrifying mountain that has come to join the western part of Miami’s skyline and will probably be under construction until sometime in the next century. Despite knowing that the most secure employment in Miami is the cradle to grave road construction business, the methods and techniques utilized in Miami leave a landscape that looks straight outta Kabul, Damascus, or Gaza. There must be a better way. How in the world can anyone stomach the noise, the litter, the rocks, the pebbles, the stones, the boulders and the endless landscape of concrete, tractors and cranes which bedevil every driver in Miami and resident near construction.
Projections are glamorous. Photos are beautiful. Renderings are gorgeous. Reality is something else. We live in an endless construction cycle. Projects are never finished. The promise of a beautiful ending is rarely fulfilled. To call this all a debacle would be an understatement. To those who argue or take exception with what I am saying; you must not drive very much or be in the industry.
To be fair, there have been advancements along the Metrorail corridor. The addition of housing and shops at the Douglas and Grove Metrorail stations are slightly reminiscent of successful projects which exist in both South Miami and Dadeland North and South. But that’s it. There is no other hope. When it comes to cars in Miami, money talks, and nobody walks. We just sit in traffic. There is a reason people say they live in Aventorture.
It is never a virtue to give up, but in this case, we all gave up long ago. Our leaders have had no vision, have no vision and could care less. If I were to meet them, I am sure that I would be more respectful than this article, hoping that they would also be polite. We would share a cafecito, and then we would go our separate ways without them having any concern for the brutality of my ride home.
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