A planned bridge to better link two Miami-Dade suburbs is instead driving them apart
Before the COVID-19 pandemic, Michelle Craven would load her three children into her car and begin the 3.3-mile trek north from Cutler Bay to Palmetto Bay, where they would go to school and day care.
Every day, she took a different route. She plugged her destination into an app like Waze or Google Maps, weaving through neighborhoods to avoid the traffic that for years has backed up on 87th Avenue before the Cutler Drain canal, which cuts the road in two and forces drivers to navigate around it. If she took the most direct route, the short distance could take 30 minutes to traverse.
Craven, 40, is among hundreds of drivers now advocating for a solution to their traffic woes.
“We’re just drowning in traffic down here,” she said
Miami-Dade County’s answer to the problem — eased temporarily by the pandemic — is to build a bridge that would extend Southwest 87th Avenue over the canal. The proposal, which has been hot-and-cold for years, was suddenly resurfaced this month by newly appointed County Commissioner Danielle Cohen Higgins and advanced by county commissioners, who set aside more than $3 million for the project and directed the county mayor to do whatever it takes to get it built.
To try and build support for the idea, Cohen Higgins called for a joint committee of residents from the two communities to consider the county’s plan.
But the proposal to better connect Palmetto Bay and Cutler Bay is instead driving them apart.
Meetings of the “Community Connectivity Council” devolved into arguing and finger-pointing and eventually fell apart entirely, with Palmetto Bay’s mayor pulling the community’s committee members on Monday before the county could even present its plans.
“We already are divided by a canal. It’s a divided community,” said Cutler Bay Mayor Timothy Meerbott, who supports the bridge. “I think the county made a mistake of politics getting involved instead of letting the engineers do their job. You let politics get involved, and you’re going to have a fight.”
For Cohen Higgins, who voiced support for the bridge before county commissioners appointed her to the seat to fill the position vacated by now-Mayor Daniella Levine Cava, the situation is her first political imbroglio. In a statement to the Herald, she called the ruckus an “effort to block the hardworking residents of South Dade from obtaining the essential connectivity needed for real traffic solutions.”
“I cannot allow critical traffic relief to be derailed, once again,” said Cohen Higgins, referring to the decision by Palmetto Bay’s mayor to pull out of the joint committee.
The proposal
A source of tension dating back to 2017, the proposed 87th Avenue bridge became a political food fight once again when Cohen Higgins introduced the item the day before a commission meeting early this month.
The bridge project would extend Southwest 87th Avenue from Southwest 164th Street to Southwest 163rd Terrace, crossing over the C-100 canal in Palmetto Bay about one mile north of the boundary between the two communities.
The proposal is especially popular among commuters coming from the south, who are forced to find detours when they hit the canal. But it is also favored by some Palmetto Bay residents like Bob Buzzelli, who says his neighborhood east of Southwest 87th Avenue becomes “ground zero” for the area’s traffic problems as drivers in search of detours turn down residential streets not designed for heavy traffic.
“We are the neighborhood that has suffered greatly,” Buzzelli said, recalling that before the pandemic, his neighbors couldn’t get out of their own driveways in the morning due to the heavy traffic.
The bridge project was first recommended as part of a 2014 study conducted by the county’s Transportation Planning Organization, or TPO, to focus on providing missing links throughout the county’s network of roads.
The study showed the bridge would reduce traffic anywhere from 10% to 40%, as well as shrink morning and afternoon peak times by as much as an hour and a half. But the project stalled in January 2018 when the TPO voted unanimously to kill the bridge, which did not have the support of Levine Cava, at the time the area’s county commissioner. Levine Cava resigned from the seat last year when she ran for mayor, and Cohen Higgins was appointed to take her place in December.
Now that the bridge is back on the table, the arguments are split almost identically to the way they were two years ago, with residents south of the canal in Cutler Bay in favor and residents north of the canal in Palmetto Bay in opposition.
Palmetto Bay pushback
Palmetto Bay Mayor Karyn Cunningham says she was caught off guard with the short notice of the resolution, and called a special council meeting to discuss the resolution and take public comment, much of which was overwhelmingly negative.
She is vehemently opposed to the project, arguing that even if it were to help the flow of traffic, it would only be a temporary fix to a growing problem. The council approved a resolution earlier this month to oppose the bridge and urge Levine Cava to veto the item and start what is known as a “conflict resolution” process before legal action may be taken.
Cunningham, who made a video about her disdain for the bridge, has also sent out emails to residents stating her opinions. She said she would rather see a more comprehensive plan for the region that would alleviate traffic congestion.
“For me, the juice is not worth the squeeze,” she said.
A Community Connectivity Council divided
While Levine Cava urged a delayed vote, she declined to veto the Cohen Higgins legislation, allowing the controversy to move to the TPO, a countywide transportation board made up of the entire county commission and a mix of city representatives..
In an attempt to calm residents and give them a voice, Cohen Higgins requested that four residents from each municipality be chosen to form a “Community Connectivity Committee,” which was tasked with meeting four times to discuss the bridge project and ultimately providing a report to the TPO with a list of pros and cons.
At the meetings, residents from both municipalities shared their thoughts — not always peacefully — from the dais at Palmetto Bay Village Hall. The meetings often involved yelling matches among the heated members, confusion about how to conduct public meetings and long extensions of meeting time due to the time spent bickering over rules.
The underlying tension has remained: Many people in Palmetto Bay believe the bridge would turn Cutler Bay’s traffic problem into their traffic problem, in part because even if the county connects 87th Avenue over the Cutler Drain, the street dead-ends again near Palmetto Bay’s northern boundary.
“I don’t understand how you can solve a problem by introducing a whole new level of cut-through streets to cut through,” said one Palmetto Bay member, AlJohn Farquharson, who also ran for Palmetto Bay village council last year.
After two meetings, Cunningham pulled the four Palmetto Bay residents from the committee and announced she would be forming her own committee to submit their recommendations, with all members against the bridge. The announcement came two hours after Cohen Higgins’ office sent a memo announcing that various county transportation experts would be presenting to the committee and answering questions.
The new Palmetto Bay committee meets Wednesday. On Thursday, the Cutler Bay town council is expected to pass a resolution in support of the bridge and will host the Community Connectivity Committee, sans the Palmetto Bay residents.
Meerbott, the mayor of Cutler Bay, said his community knows the bridge is not a total solution to the traffic problems plaguing South Miami-Dade County, a region facing rapid growth without expansion of mass transit. However, he says the bridge would help “hardworking, blue-collar people” commute to work.
Meerbott said the real problem with the bridge debate is not the logistics of the bridge itself, but the politics surrounding the issue. And while the mayors disagree on the issue fundamentally, they both agree the debate has gotten a touch out of hand. That’s why Cunningham pulled her residents off the joint committee, she said.
“I can’t have a barnyard brawl in my house,” Cunningham said.
But Meerbott said the bridge doesn’t have to be so divisive.
“The bridge is not going to be the magical fix,” he said. “But it’s going to help.”
This story was originally published February 24, 2021 at 11:27 AM.