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The South Dade Transitway, one of the six corridors of the Strategic Miami Area Rapid Transit (SMART) Plan, is now expecting a one-year delay to begin operations as the Miami-Dade Department of Transportation and Public Works is having severe supply chain difficulties in finding fiber strands necessary for the communications and technology systems along the 20-mile corridor.
The department anticipated in February that the corridor would be operational by January 2023, and now proposes that it would be operational by December 2023, CEO of the department Eulois Cleckley said at the May 26 Citizens’ Independent Transportation Trust (CITT) meeting.
The project completion date, where all the punch list of items are completed, is now set for March 2024, as opposed to April 2023 as initially planned, Mr. Cleckley said. The department adopted a design-build model, which advances two phases at the same time to accelerate the project, he added.
Construction of the $299.9 million project running from the Dadeland South Metrorail Station to the Southwest 344th Street Park-and-Ride/Transit Terminal is now 30% complete while the design phase remains at 90%. The construction phase in late February was at 25% of completion.
The South Corridor is to be operated 100% by battery electric buses, making it “one of the longest and cleanest BRT [Bus Rapid Transit] corridors in the country,” Mr. Cleckley said.
The 20-mile route is to offer a 60-minute ride from Homestead to downtown Miami through an exclusive right-of-way, parallel to US 1, with signal preemption, the website of the county details.
It is to include two end-of-line terminals at Dadeland South and Southwest 344th Street; 14 state-of-the-art transit stations; and 16 additional stops for the All-Stop Route on South Dade Transitway. Other features include passing lanes at the stations and off-board fare collection to speed up the entry of passenger to the buses.
The “BRT stations that are designed and constructed in a manner where you feel like you’re actually riding or standing on a rail station,” said Mr. Cleckley.
“We oftentimes define these BRT stations as rail light stations, and that’s done purposefully; [we] want to create a great customer experience while riding the service but also to design the stations in a manner where it does not preclude the ability to upgrade the system to some type of rail option into the future.”
The project also includes a five-level parking garage at Southwest 168th Street and the Transitway, with about 645 parking spaces, bicycle storage, electric vehicle charging, kiss-and-ride area, and public restrooms, a presentation from the department shows.
The project broke ground in June 2021. The department was awarded a $99.9 million grant from the Federal Transit Administration, making it the first Federal Capital Investment Grant that Miami-Dade County had received since the Metromover extension in 1993 and the original South Miami-Dade Busway in 1999, a press note from the county says.
The Florida Department of Transportation also committed an additional $100 million, and Miami-Dade County would fund the remaining $100 million for the corridor.
It is being designed and built by Obrascón Huarte Lain (OHL), a Spanish multinational construction and civil engineering company. The design-build contract with the county is at $368.23 million, and to date the county only has invoiced $95.97 million, Mr. Cleckley said.
