Bay Link won’t get vehicles off the road

Having grown up in New York City I’m a very big proponent of more effective mass transportation alternatives for the public. However, the proposed Bay Link, reported on in the Feb. 4 story, Bay Link project connecting Miami Beach to mainland takes major step forward, as I understand it will do little if anything to remove vehicles from the roads of Miami Beach.

Here is why:

1. The majority of the cars on the roads leading into and out of Miami Beach are driven by the people that work in hotels, condominiums, restaurants and other retail and service-oriented business.

2. The majority of the individuals identified in (1) do not live and could never afford to live in downtown Miami; so this link does nothing for them. They will still drive.

3. There is a 24/7 economy in Miami Beach — hotels, restaurants and Mt. Sinai Hospital all have staff 24 hours a day.

4. The article announced that a large block of older buildings in the Art Deco District have been purchased and will be gutted and brought back with rents double or triple today’s rents. This means all of those people if they worked on the beach will now have to commute or work elsewhere.

5. Bay Link does nothing for the tourist so they will continue to use taxis and rental cars.

Prior to spending hundreds of millions of dollars the public deserves to see actual transportation studies of where people live and where they work and how to best address the need and legitimate desire to provide effective and efficient mass transportation to take these many thousands of people and their cars off the roads.

The point I am attempting to make is that the Bay Link project as proposed doesn’t address the needs of the public. It is simply a politician’s fantasy; something cute to run down Washington Avenue and Alton Road and for politicos to point to and smile.

This story was originally published February 8, 2016 at 7:51 PM with the headline "Bay Link won’t get vehicles off the road."