Showdown between Genting monorail, Metromover on track after board backs both for Beach

The path for a monorail between Miami and Miami Beach remained on track this week after county and city leaders voted to endorse that transit option as well as a new Metromover line for a busy bridge between Miami and Miami Beach.

A county transportation board accepted a consultant’s recommendation to back either Metromover or monorail for a new line on the MacArthur Causeway, rejecting light rail and rapid-transit buses and advancing a transit goal that’s been on the table since the 1980s.

Once known as “Baylink,” the commuting corridor took on new urgency last year when Malaysian casino giant Genting proposed a privately run monorail there to be built and operated with public subsidies.

The decision on the Genting bid and any competing proposals remains months away when the County Commission votes on awarding a county contract for the project. Thursday’s meeting of the Transportation Planning Organization involved a related, but less weighty decision: Which transit mode would be best for the MacArthur Causeway.

“We’ve been studying this fairly obvious solution for more than 30 years now,” said Eileen Higgins, the Miami-Dade commissioner who represents the Beach side of the proposed route. She said the busy commuting route, a key artery for low-wage hospitality workers traveling from the mainland to beach hotels, demands an elevated transit system. “Essentially our buses are paralyzed in downtown. That paralyzes the people trying to get to Miami Beach, either to work or enjoy themselves.”

Rather than pick between Metromover or monorail, a $10 million county study by the Parsons consulting firm embraced both as preferred options. The Parsons report endorsed Miami-Dade pursuing a “rubber-wheel” vehicle for the MacArthur — a category that covers both monorail and Metromover — and the Transportation board approved the recommendation in a unanimous vote.

Though officially unrelated to the board vote, the Genting proposal framed the discussion on a 24-member panel that includes all 13 county commissioners and representatives of Miami, Hialeah and other cities. Miami Beach commissioner Micky Steinberg used her comments to note her city “does not support the expansion of gambling in any form.”

The proposed monorail route in the Parsons study assumed the mainland station would be on the former Miami Herald property that Genting now owns. Board members agreed to Steinberg’s request that the language only specify the Omni Metromover line, a route that includes the existing Omni and Museum Park Metromover stations and runs over the Genting property. .

The wording change wouldn’t make a difference for a future monorail vote: Genting has a contract to build a hotel on that county site and wants to move the Omni station to the company’s property as part of a monorail station, according to a portion of the Malaysian company’s May proposal that’s been made public.

Dennis Moss, a Miami-Dade commissioner, said he wanted to make sure the transportation board’s vote wouldn’t hamper a privatized transit project on the MacArthur.

“There is a proposal that came to us that seemed very reasonable,” he said of the Genting plan. Ralph Garcia-Toledo, a partner in the Genting monorail proposal, and project lobbyist Felix Lasarte watched from the chambers and shook hands after the vote.

The board’s vote doesn’t authorize construction of anything, and its members cannot appropriate significant funds to build anything. But the transportation board’s approval is required for federal grant dollars that can cover up to 50 percent of the project’s tab, so Thursday’s vote could be crucial if Miami-Dade, Miami or Miami Beach opts to seek Washington’s help for any portion of the plan.

The vote formally endorses two major components of a new transit system. The first is extending Metromover about two miles north to the Design District, a $407 million expansion that hasn’t been considered by commissioners and remains a hypothetical project. The second is the transit line over the MacArthur Causeway, which is the subject of a county bidding process already underway, with proposals from Genting and competitors due in March.

A third, smaller component involves new trolleys connecting the South Beach station to Miami Beach’s convention center.

Parsons consultants predicted Metromover would be a more popular option than monorail among riders, since it could offer a one-seat ride in a train from Miami’s main Metrorail station downtown at Government Center to a new station that would go up off Fifth Street in South Beach. Parsons predicted 13,000 riders a day for the $630 million Metromover extension, about 27 percent more than the 10,200 daily riders predicted for a $680 million monorail system.

While Metromover would be more expensive to build, Parsons said monorail’s yearly operating costs would be 36 percent cheaper at $7.2 million, versus nearly $10 million for Metromover. Both would run on new elevated tracks built next to the MacArthur, with no loss of auto lanes on the bridge. Genting has offered its property for a monorail station, while Metromover would likely depart for the Beach from the nearby Museum Park station.

The board’s approval of monorail or Metromover could cause complications for the county’s request for transit proposals on the MacArthur. Miami-Dade invited plans for rapid-transit buses and light rail, two modes still under consideration by Parsons when the bidding documents went out last fall.

But with Genting proposing monorail and Metromover already a staple of county transit, those two modes were considered the most likely options for MacArthur bids even before Parsons released its study this month. Board members said they were ready to see the MacArthur transit debate finally end.

“Enough with the studies,” said Miami-Dade Commissioner Sally Heyman, who represents northern Miami Beach. “We need to get this off of our desks, and into motion.”

This article was updated to remove an erroneous description of the Transportation Planning Organization board’s approved language on how a proposed monorail system could connect to the existing Omni Metromover line.

This story was originally published January 30, 2020 at 7:33 PM.