A few weeks ago, Tatiana Arcia parked her car in what she thought was a public lot near McFarlane Road and South Bayshore Drive in Coconut Grove. When she returned less than ten minutes later, boots were locked on three of her wheels. A Premier Booting Services employee was about to affix a bright-orange sticker to her window. “Warning: Your vehicle has been immobilized!” it read.
Planning on driving anywhere this weekend? Good luck! With Urban Beach Week and a new air and sea show dueling for space on the beach, plus the World OutGames hosting events at venues across the county, plus Critical Mass pedaling out of downtown tonight, prepare to stare at plenty of bright-red streets on Google Maps.
Hi, I’m Kristin. I’m the art director at Miami New Times, and I’m used to suffering in South Florida’s agonizing traffic. Most days I spend at least 40 minutes each way trapped in my car, slogging between my house in Broward County and our office in Wynwood.
In a three-day stretch last month, the following things happened on U.S. 1 between Miami and the Keys: Six people in three separate car accidents had to be airlifted to hospitals in one day; a head-on collision two days later left two women hospitalized, one in critical condition; and a rare American crocodile wandered onto the highway, causing a crash involving a Freightliner truck.
If you’re a sentient human in Miami, you know by now that trying to walk or ride your bike around town can be downright scary. Last year, 1,508 pedestrians lost their lives on South Florida roads — the third highest death toll in the nation, trailing only the New York and Los Angeles metro areas.
Maurice Ferré served as the mayor of Miami from 1973 to 1985. During that time, his administration noticed that the Brickell Bridge, which spans the Miami River downtown, had been mucking up traffic on Biscayne Boulevard. The structure is a drawbridge, and every time a boat passed into the bay, traffic on both sides of U.S. 1 ground to a halt. So Ferré’s administration proposed digging a tunnel under the river.
Yesterday the gods of spring break and social media gifted us with a video of a woman twerking atop a Miami Beach Police ATV for a few short but magical seconds. Today they’ve smiled upon us once more.
Jakarta. New Delhi. Beijing. Lagos. Bangkok. Those worldwide hubs conjure images of people crammed in traffic, honking their way through congested streets and crowded town centers. But according to one recent study, none of those global cities has a traffic problem quite like Miami’s.
Artist Cynthia Fleischmann lost the bottom half of her right leg in a brutal October 2015 motorcycle accident. And she says the Florida Department of Transportation’s shoddily maintained I-95 express lanes — where broken and missing poles let people illegally jump over into the express zones — are to blame…
Sitting in bumper-to-bumper traffic on the MacArthur Causeway, you ball up your fists and inexplicably honk your horn, because Miami logic dictates you must. As you let out a guttural cry, a Jet Ski zips past you in the water. Your first inkling — Is it DJ Khaled?! — subsides as a second, more loathsome thought makes its way to the tip of your tongue: Screw that guy.
Most citygoers love Uber, but taxi drivers can’t stand the ride-sharing app. The company has successfully “disrupted” the taxi industry, put drivers out of business, and led to mass protests in the United States and Europe. Now Uber’s new business model could put its own drivers out of business: The company has launched a pilot program in Pittsburgh, where self-driving cars ferry Uber passengers from stop to stop.
Few issues unite Miamians across the political spectrum like the consistently frustrating, for-pay express lanes running north-south on I-95. Some critics claim the lanes kill people. Others say they let rich people pay to drive without traffic. But everyone can agree that few things are more infuriating that sitting in four lanes of dead-still traffic while two perfectly usable lanes sit empty across a makeshift lane barrier.
Biking in any major city is dangerous. But biking in Miami every day can be straight-up suicidal. One study shows Miami is the fourth most dangerous city in America to commute on two wheels — behind Jacksonville, Tampa, and Orlando, three other Florida cities. Miami’s roads aren’t just crowded and poorly protected; they’re also full of drivers who seem to openly hate cyclists. In June, one bike commuter told New Times that an 81-year-old woman berated her after the elderly driver ran her over near the Miami-Dade/Broward County line.
Red-light camera operators are the tow-truck drivers and repossession kings of today’s drone-flying, surveillance-obsessed world. Camera companies place tiny, cheap lenses on traffic lights, wait for you to inch too far into an intersection, and cackle into the sky as they and the cities that hire them siphon a few hundred dollars from your wallet. The cameras themselves might not even be legal in Florida.
Most people who regularly ride Metrobus are accustomed to launching horrid invectives at Miami-Dade Transit on a daily basis. Most of the tweets tend to hit some of Metrobus’ greatest hits, including questions such as “Where did my bus go?” “What’s the point in taking the bus if it’s going to sit in standstill traffic?” and “No, seriously, did the bus I take regularly to work cross the wrong river and accidentally get trapped in the haunted bathhouse world from Spirited Away?”
Miamians with cars are forced to bend over backward each day to avoid the nonstop gridlock that is downtown traffic during the day. Trying to travel between 8 a.m. and 8 p.m.? Good luck getting to Doral in less than an hour. Ditto driving across the MacArthur Causeway.
Depending upon your income bracket, Art Basel either conjures images of yacht cruises from Martha’s Vineyard to Biscayne Bay or standstill traffic full of wailing babies on the MacArthur Causeway. Driving in Miami sucks all year, but the hordes of wealthy tourists who arrive for Basel take congestion to hellish levels.
The fates haven’t been kind to Miami this November. Despite the fact that our multicultural, immigrant-heavy city roundly rejected Donald Trump at the polls last Tuesday, we’re stuck with him. But we have some extra awful news: Construction on the Venetian Causeway begins Monday.
In case Democrats and the #NeverTrump crowd didn’t have enough reason to mobilize for election day, the Donald did them a big favor at the debate last night. Refusing to promise you’ll accept a peaceful transition of power is not the kind of move likely to up your approval ratings…
Critical Mass participants typically grab a beer after the ride the last Friday of every month. The rides always begin and end at Government Center in downtown Miami, which means Wynwood is only a short ride away. But after tonight’s ride, bikers won’t have to pay for that first beer…
One of two things will happen in Downtown Miami tonight. One: Donald Trump, who is leading an impromptu, 6 p.m. rally at the James L. Knight Center, and Kanye West, who will host his first of two Saint Pablo Tour shows at the American Airlines Arena at 8 p.m., will…
Cars skid down a sun-baked road, jockeying brutally for position. Some drivers scream and others laugh maniacally as they hang out of windows. Then one pulls out a flamethrower and blasts sizzling columns of fire at the tailgaters. Another hurls a spear with an explosive tip, blasting the back of…
