State toll board kills Miami-Dade’s Kendall Parkway for a shorter 836 extension

A state toll board on Thursday officially killed the stalled plans for the Kendall Parkway, a 14-mile extension of the 836 Expressway into Southwest Miami-Dade County.

“We could sit around and continue to say we’re going to build this highway out to Kendall, and it’s going to fix the world. Or we could be fiscally responsible, and be honest with the community,” Rodolfo Pages, a board member of the Greater Miami Expressway Agency (GMX), said after the unanimous vote to scrap the Kendall Parkway plan in favor of extending the 836 just four miles to Southwest Eighth Street. “In our lifetime,” Pages said of the Kendall Parkway plan, “we will never be able to build that highway.”

While GMX says the planned Kendall Parkway would cost $3 billion to develop, the new plan for an elevated four-mile 836 extension is expected to cost about $1.5 billion. That would take the expressway — formally known as State Road 836 and commonly called the Dolphin — to where Eighth Street meets Southwest 157th Avenue. The elevated portion was always going to be the most expensive part of the project, with the bulk of the Kendall Parkway south of Eighth Street planned to be at street level.

The vote marks the most significant change yet from Miami-Dade County losing control of the toll board that runs the 836 and four other toll roads: the Airport, Don Shula, Snapper Creek and Gratigny expressways.

While the previous board — then called the Miami-Dade Expressway Authority — approved the 14-mile extension of the 836 as a way to speed commuting times to and from Kendall, that panel was ousted in 2023 during a legal fight with Tallahassee. The Florida Legislature passed a law in 2019 authorizing a state-controlled board to take over Miami-Dade’s expressway system, and the new agency — known as GMX — is governed by a majority of board members appointed by Gov. Ron DeSantis.

The state takeover quickly killed momentum for the 836 extension, with GMX administrators halting a program to acquire land along the planned route. The board’s vote to scrap the original route in favor of the four-mile extension to Eighth Street made it official.

U.S. Rep. Carlos Gimenez, R-Miami, had served as chair of the original toll board — known as the MDX — when he was Miami-Dade’s mayor and was the top champion of the Kendall Parkway. On Thursday, he criticized the new board for the decision.

“It will do nothing to alleviate traffic in Kendall,” Gimenez told the Miami Herald. “Which was the original intent of the extension.”

GMX leaders contend other planned improvements of local roads that already connect the 836 to Kendall — the widening of Southwest 137th and 157th Avenues — weaken the case for spending billions on a multi-lane expressway that would be built on environmentally sensitive lands in the western part of Miami-Dade.

With less money needed in the toll agency’s long-range plans for an 836 extension, GMX leaders say they can focus resources on existing toll roads that need smaller upgrades and expansion projects. That includes a planned modernization of the Airport Expressway, which is formally known as State Road 112.

“We don’t build just to build,” said Fatima Perez, chair of the GMX board. “We have systemwide improvements that are needed.”