Commissioner Daniella Levine Cava: Transportation in Miami Dade, My View. Guest Blog

This is a follow-up to yesterday's post on Monday's Transit March that Commissioner Daniella Levine Cava attended:

County Commissioner Daniella Levine Cava

We have been starving our public transit system for decades, allowing our buses and trains to deteriorate without adequate maintenance and basically running them into the ground. 

The County has recently used a decline in ridership as an excuse for yet even more service cuts. But reduced ridership comes when patrons vote with their feet. They have been abandoning a deteriorating, unreliable, uncomfortable system when other options are more likely to get them to places on time. That is, for those who can make such a choice.  We cannot blame the customer for not buying our product.

This chronic disinvestment in our transit system has to stop.  And with this last budget debate, it looks like the community made a pretty solid case for transit.  Millennials came and spoke passionately about how they want to live in a place where they don’t have to own a car. Urban professionals spoke about how they’re perceived by their colleagues as less reliable because they ride transit, and the transit dependent came out to plead for the resources needed to keep their lifeline going.

I was grateful for the public’s support to restore Transit funding during this last budget debate.  I believe this community outpouring was critical to the Commission’s attempt to reverse the service reductions in the original budget.  We weren’t entirely successful – the department still faces significant cuts this year unfortunately, but some service was restored and planned privatization of a number of routes was curtailed.  So our work has just begun. 

We have at least another year to go before we really see the new Metrorail cars make it into service, and about that long before we replace a portion of our overburdened bus fleet with new natural gas and electric buses.  So in this next year we will need that public support even more to bridge that gap.

We have three kinds of riders: those who have no choice (“transit dependent”), those who have a choice (“choice riders”), and those future riders who will ride when we have “premium” transit that is more reliable, efficient, comfortable and desirable than sitting in their cars wasting hours in traffic.

The SMART plan will bring premium transit, but to secure the bulk of the funding we must get through the multi-year process laid out by the Federal and State government to justify their investment in our plan. A major factor in that decision-making process is showing that there’s demand, and the potential to grow that demand, for transit service.  So I have focused my attention for the past three years on building up that ridership in the communities I represent by seeking immediate improvements to the transit system serving South Dade.  I believe that we must demonstrate our ability to effectively respond to our community’s transportation needs in order to earn back some of that lost public trust.  After all, how can we be trusted to effectively manage a major expansion without first showing that we can run the system we already have?

Here are some of the things, big and small, that I’ve been working on to make a dent in this enormous challenge:

·         I pressed for many months for the purchase of dozens of new hybrid-electric bending buses to replace the old and breakdown-prone fleet of buses that are the real “workhorse” of our Transit system.  Those new buses have made great improvements to the reliability of the routes they serve.  We need to keep that momentum.

·         Working with the Cities in South Dade, we identified an opportunity to create a new express route by splitting an existing route in half.  Transit worked with us to set up the “34 Express A & B” which has proved to be a tremendous success.  This is the only route to show consistently growing ridership (up by 30% at one point) in a time when nearly all other routes are suffering declines.

·         With the support of the Cities in South Dade, we also renamed the Busway to the Transitway to forecast its evolution to something more.

·         I’ve worked to make simple changes, like allowing city circulators to operate on the Transitway, and working with School Board Chairman Larry Feldman to study the potential for allowing school buses to operate on the Transitway as a way to reduce traffic on US1 and get kids to school on time.

·         The County is installing new adaptive traffic signals on the Transitway that will make it possible for transit patrons to get to their destination faster and help provide some relief for traffic on US1.  We should see improvements from this new technology by year’s end.

·         I’ve been advocating for circulators to serve unincorporated Miami-Dade since they’ve been so effective in many of our cities.  I am working to add this issue into current studies.

·         We’ve been working to build on the successful express model developed for I-95 where the tolls pay for Transit.  I’ve been advocating for the Turnpike Enterprise to replicate that system for their expressway for years. Recently Chairman Bovo renewed that effort to seek Turnpike toll revenue support for the planned express system connecting Homestead, Kendall, Doral and Northwest Dade that is also part of the SMART Plan.

We must insist that the County invest in the transit system we have today, not just the system we hope to have in the future.  We need to focus, stay hopeful, and continue to remain engaged. We were able to blunt some of the damage this time, but we need to keep building upon that to ensure that Transit remains a priority. So keep it coming!

(Daniella: I have been using public transit regularly because the traffic is mind-numbing, gridlock. I fall into your number 2 category. I go shopping at Dadeland or to Kendall restaurants by train from Coconut Grove. At least I don't lose my mind on the train ride and at rush hour it is faster than driving. I also don't have to transfer to a bus [I wouldn't]. I go directly to my destination.

I was just on 95 and the traffic was at a standstill in both directions. It was 12:30 pm. If I could have taken a train that could get me to my location I would have.  - Genius)

Traffic Jammed at Noon on 95 From the Broward Line South...

On another note: I found a video I liked...I shortened it so you could see Daniella Levine Cava, this one is about the Everglades and our water supply.