I was just strolling through Miami-Dade Transit’s spiffy new website. I like the new website design, its easy to navigate and unoffensive, but unfortunately, it can’t tell me anything I want to hear. It can’t tell me when a bus will arrive at a given location (like a gps bus tracker common in other cities) and it can’t give me good news about transit expansion in Dade county. The site redesign is like many things Miami: all flash, no substance. Repackaging something doesn’t change what it says.
I have to give the site credit: it provides you with a wealth of information/studies/reports. Lots of good plans with budgets that don’t support the planning with funding.
I decided to explore a little, and I came across all sorts of great info. I stumbled on the Citizens Independent Codependent Transportation Trust pages (which still look like the old MDT pages by the way). After a little more sleuthing I come up with this gem:
http://www.miamidade.gov/citt/library/review_ptp_surtax_revenue.pdf
Are you kidding me. You spent $1.4 BILLION dollars and all we have to show for system expansion six years later are some buses and 2.5 miles of (half-built but quickly going up) heavy rail??
It is no wonder that the federal government doesn’t want to give us any transit money – we are irresponsible with what we have. Looking through the December 2009 PTP audit also reveals that $200 million of the above amount went to cities (as part of their share) and over $100 million went to Public Works contracts (read: fixing traffic signals and repaving/expanding lanes).
On the plus side we have a central transit hub: the Miami Intermodal Center, or MIC. At least we connected the Metrorail to the airport (that’s what we tell ourselves anyway – to make up for the punishing price tag).
Now we have to connect the people to the Metrorail.
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