Highway or walkway? State considers options for Miami’s Calle Ocho
The fate of Miami’s famed Calle Ocho is in
the hands of state transportation officials who will decide whether the
street should be a more efficient highway or become more pedestrian
friendly.
The Florida
Department of Transportation conducted a planning study for Southwest
8th Street and Southwest 7th Street from Brickell Avenue to Southwest
27th Street. The area extends from Miami’s Brickell financial district,
across the clogged Interstate 95 entries, into historic Little Havana.
The state is about to begin a project development and environmental
(PD&E) phase that could lead to major changes on Calle Ocho.
The street is also home to the Calle Ocho parade and music festival every March.
Currently, both
streets feature three one-way lanes. Southwest 8th Street (Calle Ocho)
heads east and Southwest 7th Street goes west. Local architecture firm
Plus Urbia developed a preliminary plan to make the street more
welcoming to pedestrians, bicyclists and public transit while slowing
car traffic down.
Juan Mullerat,
founder of PlusUrbia and a resident in the area, said Calle Ocho is
more like a highway than a main street. He’s heard from many businesses
there that want more options for pedestrians.
“I have two daughters and I push a stroller
down that street,” Mullerat said. “When cars are driving by at 50 miles
per hour it make it less enjoyable. With a one-way traffic pattern, the
cars feel they can go faster. Two-way streets are always better for
commercial streets.”
PlusUrbia, the
same firm that designed the rezoning changes in Wynwood, has a plan for
one direction each of two-way traffic on both Southwest 7th and 8th
Streets with an added bus lane and bike lane. The sidewalks would be
widened to nine feet and the street-side parking would remain.
The design by
PlusUrbia apply to the intersection with Southwest 17th Avenue and the
adjoining blocks. The question is how traffic would be impacted further
east, where there’s a daily crunch of cars moving between Interstate 95
and Brickell.
“This dense
urban corridor has seen significant growth in the last decade with
high-density high-rise developments and its operation is expected to be
impacted with increased traffic volumes by several new major development
projects currently proposed within the Brickell area,” FDOT spokeswoman
Ivette Ruiz-Paz said.
The study's
goals include improving access to Brickell and the highway interchange,
making the street more pedestrian friendly, and promoting multi-modal
transportation, she added. The PD&E study will begin in winter 2016
and should last two or three years.
However, Ruiz-Paz said FDOT has short-term
pedestrian improvements to Calle Ocho that are coming within the next
few years, including traffic control and pedestrian crossing signals.
Mullerat, who is
on the steering committee for the FDOT study, said the state is
focusing too much on traffic and not on the experience for the people
and businesses who live there. Having a flashing light at a pedestrian
crosswalk doesn’t help much when cars are driving by so fast, he said.
“The solution we
are seeing are car oriented and we shouldn’t be in the business of
moving cars. We should be in the business of moving people,” Mullerat
said. “The solution I feel FDOT is moving toward is more cars, a better
way of moving cars down the street and that is not what we are looking
for. That is using Calle Ocho as a transit corridor at the expense of
people living there. We are getting choked by traffic.”
Mullerat wants to hold a public forum of local stakeholders, so FDOT can hear what residents and businesses think.
“We need to get
presentations from people who know what they are talking about,”
Mullerat said. “If DOT decides to only put palm trees and benches, that
is not what merchants want.”
http://www.bizjournals.com/southflorida/news/2015/07/24/highway-or-walkway-state-considers-options-for.html
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