Bus shelters aren’t accessibility if riders can’t safely reach them in Miami-Dade | Opinion

Bus shelter access

Miami-Dade County’s plan to spend nearly $25 million on 500 additional bus shelters, roughly $50,000 per shelter, is welcome news. In a county where heat, rain and long waits are part of daily transit life, riders need shade, lighting, trash receptacles and safer places to wait.

One basic point, however, must not get lost: a bus shelter is meaningful only if riders can safely reach it. That is especially true for seniors, disabled riders, parents with strollers and anyone using a walker, wheelchair, scooter or cane. If the path to a shelter requires crossing grass, gravel, broken pavement, weeds, dirt paths or unsafe roadways, the shelter may look good in a report but fail in real life.

At Okeechobee Metrorail Station, riders are using an informal dirt path behind the station to connect to the pedestrian tunnel because there is no safe, continuous accessible sidewalk into and out of the station. That should never be the fallback route to public transit.

Accessibility cannot be treated as a box checked on paper. It must be planned at the start, built into the project and confirmed on the ground after installation. The question should not be only, “Did we install a shelter?” but also, “Can every rider safely get there, wait and board from there?”

Spending public money on shelters should come with a clear commitment: every location must include a safe, continuous, ADA-accessible route. A shelter without access is not real accessibility. It is decoration. Miami-Dade has an opportunity to get this right.

Theo Karantsalis,

Miami Springs,

chair,

Miami-Dade County Commission on Disability Issues

Look no further

The recent resignation of Coral Gables’ city manager presents an opportunity for commissioners to ensure continuity, stability and experienced leadership during a pivotal time for our city. Fortunately, the city already has a highly qualified, proven leader serving as deputy city manager: Joe Gomez.

I have known Gomez for more than three decades and have seen firsthand the professionalism, integrity and sound judgment he brings to public service. His experience across the public and private sectors provides the balanced perspective needed to lead a sophisticated city like ours. Equally important, he is responsive, accessible, collaborative and guided by common sense, qualities essential to effective municipal leadership.

As cities nationwide face challenges in infrastructure, mobility, development, resilience and fiscal stewardship, Coral Gables would benefit from a leader who already understands the city’s culture, priorities and operations. A lengthy, costly national search is unnecessary when the city already has capable leadership in place.

I urge the mayor and commissioners to recognize the exceptional talent already at City Hall and to swiftly appoint Gomez as the next city manager.

Margarita Rohaidy Delgado,

Coral Gables

Equalizing IRAs

Our government directs most of its largess to the extremely wealthy and the ordinary wealthy. However, as a nation, we should financially shelter our less-wealthier citizens, too.

It should not be possible to manipulate IRAs, and particularly Roth IRAs, to a multi-billion dollar level as investor and entrepreneur Peter Thiel has done. IRA contributions should be capped to provide a secure retirement cushion; it’s not a tax evasion scheme for the rich.

Contributions should be limited to a modest cash amount, with no shares in private companies. The federal government could then provide a modest match, such as the recently proposed $1,000.

This would treat every citizen equally and, long term, build comfortable retirements without enriching billionaires. It would also expose those billionaires to taxes that could pay for the IRAs for which they, equally with ordinary Americans, benefit.

Mary Zins,

Coral Gables

Dishonest deal

Miami-Dade County’s leaders gave a downtown lot, apparently worth north of $100 million, to Donald Trump. For free.

Miami Dade College owned that lot. Never mind the students. County officials determined that the best use was to give it to a billionaire, who likely will build a hotel. There’s also a bit of nonsense about a presidential library, but that excuse is too transparent to merit serious discussion.

If built, the hotel will tower over downtown Miami, with its Trump banners, billboards, flags and golden statues for all to see.

When the history of this era is finally written, assuming we survive as a free society, the building might find its proper purpose as a memorial to the humiliation of Miami. And to the disgrace of those supposed leaders who bowed down and voted for corruption.

Harold Sussman,

Miami

Miami facilities

As a long time Miami-Dade County resident (and former city of Miami resident), I find it ironic that the Miami Herald’s editorial board, in its May 14 editorial, “New public safety building may be urgent, but Miami’s bond math isn’t adding up,” publicly criticized Miami Mayor Eileen Higgins for proposing a longterm solution to the city’s deficient facilities. She unfortunately inherited this mess from past administrations that repeatedly deferred or ignored repairs.

Allocating and providing taxpayer funds or subsidies to construct a baseball stadium and, more recently, leasing city land to a soccer stadium does not benefit the public wellbeing. The city hasn’t spent all of a $400 million Miami Forever bond issue voters approved for public safety, affordable housing and flood resiliency.

I am sure the mayor and her staff performed their due diligence to come up with an accurate cost figure for the facility and not simply some hypothetical number.

Mike Arias,

West Miami-Dade

Dignity, not sales

Memorial Day did not begin as a shopping weekend. A service member dies — you get a discount?

That’s the absurdity we’ve drifted into. Memorial Day began as Decoration Day, when families carried jugs of water, rags and fresh blossoms to the graves of the fallen. They scrubbed headstones by hand. They knelt in the grass. They whispered beloved names. They remembered.

Yet today, their memory competes with banner ads, coupon codes and “doorbusters.” Retail noise drowns out remembrance. As for corporate America, too many companies behave like lemmings — terrified to break from the herd, terrified to lead, terrified to say, “This feels wrong.”

I now live in Colorado, but my heart is still in Miami. And Miami knows sacrifice. Homestead Air Reserve Base. Coast Guard crews who never came home. Families who carry the ache long after the ceremonies end. The fallen whose names we must not forget and so many more who fill our military cemeteries and a debt we cannot ever repay.

Let’s stop hijacking the name of a solemn day for marketing. No more sales named Memorial Day. Call it a Summer Kickoff Sale. Call it Early Summer Savings. A recliner will sell even if you call it “Super Duper Sunny Sales Day.”

Call it literally anything that doesn’t steal valor. Honor the fallen. Sell the furniture. Just don’t confuse the two. We are better than that. Let’s reclaim common sense and the solemn dignity of the day we named to honor the fallen, not a corporate quarterly return.

Dawn P Balzano,

Broomfield, CO