Ferocious Traffic: what comes next? … by gimleteye

In Miami during the summer, traffic is a breeze compared to what comes next. As schools return and the fall weather improves, traffic turns titanic.

What is happening downtown, these days, at rush hour and beyond defies elaboration. There is only one word for the blaring horns, lane restrictions, the gridlock at successive street lights: ferocious.

The traffic is ferocious for a reason.

image at 8:21 AM

When you are stuck in Miami traffic this December, remember: you voted for the elected officials -- in the city of Miami, the city of Miami Beach, in Miami-Dade county, the state legislature and Governor's Mansion who made this happen.

Many of these public officials are still in office. Many are looking for a way back in.

Will voters ever hold them accountable for the destruction of quality of life that goes along with community-stifling, business-deadening traffic? Not yet.

There is every indication (Ludlam Trail, anyone?) that our elected officials will continue to vote for "compromises" that impose even greater traffic burdens on taxpayers and residents.

Massive construction and development of downtown corridors preceded any response by elected officials to estimate, plan and build infrastructure adequate to the need.

Sure every zoning and permitting hearing is clogged with expert consultants, using charts and graphs to show how their client's project will not increase traffic.

Complainers -- civic activists for better transit, for public parks and the environment -- are derided, dismissed, marginalized or otherwise politely pushed away by technicalities.

Builders during the boom and even after the bust are glorified. Their names get put on buildings, while the mess they helped created is absorbed as the natural order of things. Jorge Perez, for example. Mayor Manny Diaz, for example.

When you want "growth at any cost", the way the Chamber of Commerce or Club for Growth or Associated Industries or the South Florida Builders do, taxpayers are left with exactly this: ferocious traffic.

These days one begins to hear voices from the business sector in advertiser-sponsored media, lamenting we "could" kill the goose that lays the golden egg. Ex-cuse me?

For distant investors -- that describes the vast majority of owners in downtown Miami -- all that matters is that their assets are safe and secure. The rest of us -- the commuters, the downtown residents imagining they are moving into a sophisticated city -- are fuel pellets for growth.

You could ask, wouldn't it be a good idea to make traffic improvements concurrent at the same time or in advance of construction and development?

At the state level, the idea of comprehensive land use planning was destroyed by the Republican legislature after more than thirty years of work and bipartisan consensus. Was Gov. Scott held accountable for putting the Florida DCA, the agency once charged with reviewing traffic concurrency, into a capital broom closet?

As all the Miami condo canyons were being created and making mortgage investors, insurers, banks and their shareholders very wealthy on Brickell and downtown, of course they knew that the roadways would not be able to hold the traffic.

We've been planning badly for transit to accommodate growth for so long that, now, there is no elasticity whatsoever in car movement along Miami's roadways and interstates. At rush hour, any -- and I mean, ANY -- glitch in traffic flow causes a massive logjam that can easily double or triple normal transit times.

The other evening, trying to find the fastest route downtown -- imagining to be on the far side of rush hour -- I looked at my Google map and every road and artery downtown was a solid red line. It was a representation of cardiac arrest.

Ferocious traffic is not destiny. It is what we chose at the ballot box.