Come on Chamber of Commerce and Miami Herald: let’s hear what you have to say about the latest ding to Miami’s reputation: road rage capital of the United States.
The AP reports, “For the second consecutive year, rude drivers have earned Miami the title of worst road rage city in a survey released Tuesday.”
We can’t be certain this is good news for the crashing housing markets in Miami, or, for prospective foreign investors.
But for the natives, what can you tell us we don’t know already?
WLRN reports that it’s a confluence of elderly drivers meeting up on the road with young people with urgent destinations.
That’s bull. If you’ve driven in Miami for a while, you know what the problem is.
It is called, “the unabsorbed cost of growth”.
Here is the bottom line: to expand tax base (and profits for political campaign contributors who dominate legislatures), local elected officials routinely pass zoning changes and approve building permits for major projects justified on the basis of “transportation studies” by rubber-stamp engineers who are paid to show that impacts are always minimal and always absorbed by existing infrastructure, by traffic circles and other “traffic calming devices”.
We’d like to see those engineers hoist on their own traffic calming devices.
To glimpse the seeds of road rage, (who needs to?), drive from the mainland to Miami Beach any morning of the week: the Biscayne Boulevard exit off 395 narrows to a single lane served, at the bottom, by a stoplight and spur branching off in three directions.
That single lane serves, what?
It serves the Miami Herald. It serves the Miami Arena. The Carnivorous Performing Arts Center. It serves the Port of Miami. It serves the downtown financial center and government buildings. And, it serves two skyscraper condominiums right at the bottom of the ramp, with more than a thousand units in total, nearing completion.
So what you will see on any morning is traffic for that exit stacked back from the ramp almost to 95, nearly half a mile.
Why WOULDN'T Miami have the worst road rage in the nation?
Driving in Miami is an adventure on the Ouji Board of Transportation: the time to your destination is up to the gods.
People’s patience on the roads is burnt to a crisp.
The root of the problem is that Miami and Miami-Dade county government does little else but issue zoning and building permits and postpone the costs of growth.
The formula is so familiar, no one even recognizes it anymore. Lots of people who did, have moved away from our area.
For the rest of us, we can only marvel at the disinformation. County departments, like water and sewer with their ultra-low rates, claim that they are “self-supporting”.
What does that mean? With billions of dollars in infrastructure backlogs, how is that self-supporting?
It is a deep hole that Miami has dug for itself, over a very long period of time, by postponing the costs of growth.
Every additional development decision, like Jorge Perez’ new towers at Mercy Hospital, just piles on the costs.
The Chamber of Commerce and Miami Herald are mostly silent. That’s the price of progress and no one, ever, is held accountable.
That’s the story of Dorrin Rolle and JESCA, below. And that’s the other great story in the Miami Herald today, how the county commission are wasting time in a discussion of banning the “N” word. @#$@#%%^%
For more on the disintegration of meaning, read below.
9 comments:
Hi,
Where u got that photo from?
what can anyone do? it's a mess out there!
Great photo, even if it's not from Florida.
When you look at the list in context, we're in fairly good company. The top largest cities/metros are in there.. So heavy traffic and limited ways to get around makes people angry and short-fused -- that's all this shows. And aggressive behavior fuels even more aggressive behavior, since you have to adapt your own defensive driving to survive.
I think LRN and Anonymous above hit the nail on the head. Our traffic may be horrible, but it is certainly not worse than Los Angeles or Manhattan.
We have an interesting cocktail made up of the old and timid and the young and aggressive. Throw in a good measure of foreign trained drivers used to more chaotic streets and here we are.
Good try blaming the residents of unfinished condominiums for the I395/Biscayne interchange. The construction of those buildings has certainly made it more difficult to get around downtown, but those people are simply not there yet and wouldn't be traveling in that direction in the morning anyway.
I half-expected you to somehow blame the FP&L Glades County plant.
Love that photo.
The problem is too many cars? right? Do I win anything??
Thanks for the compliments on the photo. I can't take credit for that. Nor can I offer any prize, except to say that I will pass your way the next solicitation from the widow of the deceased trade minister from Nigeria who only requires a small escrow account to assure the transfer of US $10,000,000. It will be a promising opportunity, the same way the county commission promises that transportation will be ameliorated by zoning for office space and commercial outside the urban development boundary, to attract traffic westward, instead of east.
Dear Mr. Muckenfuss,
I'm not blaming the residents of unfinished condominiums at the intersection of Biscayne and 395. Nor FPL or the Glades Power Plant. It's the fault of zoning and permitting officials, that would be the city commissioners and our "green" mayor, Manny 'Stand up for our parks' Diaz.
So "they won't be traveling in that direction anyway"? I suppose there will be no additional traffic generated in the morning to supply those buildings or their residents? No pressure on surrounding traffic exchanges?
How about when the residents are coming home, on nights when the Heat are playing, or, Cats is performing at the PAC? Or a few museum openings at the proposed MAC or Museum of Science?
WLRN missed the point entirely, no surprise there.
They would fistfight if they could have gotten out.
Traffic, congestion and the number of cars on the road are not the root causes of the out-of-control road rage and dangerous driving practices here in Miami. The same behavior that happens on I95 at rush hour also occurs on a nearly deserted US1 at 4:00 in the morning. And the same reckless behavior and disregard for one's neighbor also occurs at the line at the drugstore and in the aisle at the supermarket. Sadly, this is a deep rooted cultural problem in Miami, and I'm not sure there's a solution. What will help, though, and certainly cannot hurt, is a ban on cell phones while driving, but only if it is enforced. Furthermore, the writer for WLRN must not even be from Miami, and is still living in the 70s when this place was known for its retirees. I'd much rather have a little old blue haired lady peeking up to see over her dashboard and driving 15 mph than what we have to deal with now.
Post a Comment