For years, swarms of local cyclists have been taking over city streets the last Friday of every month in a massive — and notoriously traffic-snarling — celebration of bike culture. Today they have another reason to ride: in honor of cyclists lost to distracted driving, especially Patrick Wanninkhof, a Key Biscayne native killed in 2015 while on a cross-country trip.
For years, anyone who hopped onto Miami’s Metromover paid a quarter per ride. But in 2002, voters approved a half-penny sales tax that made Metromover free. Ridership soared to 9 million annually in the early 2000s and then peaked again with a surge of new development downtown in recent years.
Last year, seemingly overnight, hundreds of brightly colored bicycles from companies like Lime and Ofo began popping up everywhere in Miami. Or, as Miami-Dade County Commissioner Javier Souto puts it, the bikes began “descending upon neighborhoods,” like some kind of two-wheeled invasive species. He and other county officials are fed up…
One of the (only) fun parts of driving in the traffic hellscape of South Florida is that you never know what you might see: a woman twerking on the roof of a car, a truck towing a flaming boat, or a man sprawled on his stomach on the hood of a Benz blazing in an express lane.
What could you do with 64 extra hours of time this year? You could marathon every Star Wars movie ever produced three times in a row. You could road-trip from Miami to San Francisco with 20 extra hours to nap along the way. Hell, you could ride your bike all the way to Atlanta if you’re into that kind of thing.
Hopping on a bike in Miami takes guts. Even for experienced cyclists, navigating aggressive drivers and oblivious pedestrians is a skill in and of itself. Picking a safe path is essential, which is why the Venetian Causeway has become one of Miami’s most used bike routes. And the Venetian just got an upgrade making it even more bicycle-friendly.
This past Tuesday, when volunteers were preparing to open for their normal 6-to-9 p.m. shift, they discovered thieves had been broken into the collective’s modified shipping container. Someone had hauled away three new bikes, expensive tools, and a generator the nonprofit group uses to keep the lights on. The total value was $4,000. It is the fourth time the bicycle collective has been targeted since it moved to Omni Park last February, according to Ruben van Hooidonk, the group’s vice president.
Last year, Miami Beach began working on a new dock at Purdy Avenue and tested an expanded water taxi service that took riders to downtown Miami and the Miami Beach Marina. Commissioners hoped offering more transportation options on water might help ease persistently maddening traffic problems on land.
American Traffic Solutions (ATS) certainly seems to be one of the most hated companies in America. The Arizona-based firm runs red-light-camera ticketing services for hundreds of cities and counties across the nation. If you’ve ever been fined $150 after a camera caught you driving through an intersection, you can probably blame that company.
The Art Basel traffic apocalypse is nigh. Gridlock looms over the horizon. For local residents who plan on staying indoors this weekend, it’s time to buy bread and milk and screw in some hurricane shutters. For visitors and Basel partygoers, however, the weekend’s horrible, recurring traffic problems are but a…
Perhaps nothing unites Miamians more than our shared hatred for I-95. A simple morning commute on the godforsaken stretch of highway almost always means dodging drivers diving through the plastic poles to get to the express lanes, narrowly avoiding horrific crashes, and sitting in traffic jams that last long enough to allow for an impromptu yoga session.
In the wake of Hurricane Irma, power outages shut down almost 70 percent of traffic lights in Miami-Dade County. The result proved what most of us already instinctively knew: Literally no one in South Florida knows how to use a four-way stop.
A Miami ordinance allows for up to 100 pedicabs to operate within city limits, but unnecessary obstacles in permitting have stifled pedicab companies from breaking in. Consequently, Miami is one of few major cities without pedicabs as part of its public transportation system.
For the past eight years, Miamians have ranked as one of the most stressed-out populations in America. And being trapped in an overpopulated city without adequate public transportation doesn’t help. Metrorail sucks so bad it’s referred to as “Metrofail,” and somehow we still haven’t figured out a way to build a train across the bay to South Beach.
If you live on any of Miami-Dade County’s barrier islands or low-lying coastal areas, now is the time to get out. After hurricane forecasts put Miami square in the center of Hurricane Irma’s path, Miami-Dade County Mayor Carlos Gimenez late Wednesday ordered a mandatory evacuation of all residents of barrier…
A few Miami politicians are trying to make it safer to ride a bike here. Miami City Commissioner Ken Russell has pushed for painted bike lanes downtown, which cyclists love but drivers now blame for screwing up traffic patterns in the area. But anyone who’s ever ridden a bike here…
Officer Kenia Fallat, a spokesperson for the Miami Police Department, was driving an unmarked cop car yesterday when she hit 19-year-old Jimmy John’s sandwich-delivery bicyclist Mason Morales. Yet somehow it was Morales who eventually ended up in jail on criminal mischief charges.
Lace up your sneakers and get peddling — or at least do your best to avoid downtown or the causeways to the Beach — because tonight Miami’s cyclists will embark on their monthly 19-mile trek through town. If you’re trying to avoid traffic to make a quick escape the last Friday of the month, pay close attention to the route.
Miami Beach’s Citi Bike rental program is extremely simple: You pay a small fee, pick a bike off a rack, and ride it to another rack and leave it there. LimeBike, a Silicon Valley startup, is trying to streamline that process even further by removing the need for bike racks. You simply leave the bike on the sidewalk when you’re done, and the brakes lock automatically.
On a Sunday morning about a year ago, Robert Lansburgh rode his bike across the MacArthur Causeway. The longtime cyclist was stunned by the view along the way — but also a bit shaken by the cars rushing past him. “It’s three lanes. It’s not patrolled,” he says. “You have cars that could be going 80 mph. It’s out of control. It’s great if you have a Ferrari and you want to get it in sixth gear.”
The idea of jumping on a bike in Miami is so inherently un-Miami that the thought alone is enough to make most people shudder. In addition to dodging construction sites and potholes, there’s the fact that the blistering heat and oppressive humidity might turn you into a puddle, Alex Mack-style.
In case he hasn’t already done enough to ruin your 2017, President Donald Trump is coming to Miami today to personally make your brutal morning commute worse than it already is. Trump is taking a break from yelling at Democrats and Hillary Clinton on Twitter to reveal his Cuba policy during a speech early this afternoon at the Manuel Artime Theater in Little Havana.
