Above is the information I've previously mentioned about the upcoming SFRTA/Tri-Rail Workshop in Miami-Dade County on Friday November 14th at the Miami-Dade Expressway office located at 3790 N.W. 21st Street, across the street from Tri-Rail’s Miami Airport Tri-Rail Station.
Workshops are scheduled to begin in the Boardroom at 8:30 a.m. and end around 12:30, and parking is available at the Tri-Rail lot across the street.
Information is available online at http://www.tri-rail.com/announcements.htm.
RSVP at (954) 788-7958
At the August 22 meeting of the SFRTA Governing Board, the professional staff was directed to plan transit workshops this fall in each of the three counties, to be followed by a "Regional Transit Summit" in January or February. The Palm Beach workshop has already been held.
The thought is that the workshops and summit will help build public momentum and support for transit in advance of the legislative session in Tallahassee.
I've already made some suggestions to some folks involved about being sure to schedule it at a time when the pols aren't too distracted by other events going on in the state where they hope to cop invites or comps to to attend, like the Daytona 500 on February 15th, the BCS Title game on January 8th, especially if the Gators are involved in the latter, as I still think they may against Texas, or, the Super Bowl in Tampa on February 1st. http://www.tampabaysuperbowl.com/
I expect that Gabriel and the folks at Transit Miami http://www.transitmiami.com/ will have a lot more to say about the workshop in Miami as the date draws near, but I did want to remind you all for the second time here that it is going to be happening within the next three weeks, so mark your calendars.
As I've expressed here more than a few times, I really wish that a TM-like grass roots organization had existed when I was growing-up down here to give the general public a lot more of a voice and a counter-weight to some of the bad decisions that were already being made regarding the Metrorail's future, since the Tri-Rail would make even more sense now if some of the places my friends and I then frequented, had possibilities of being integrated into a larger regional transit network.
When I'd come home from IU during the summer, and wanted to be able to get around sensibly and quickly, and not forever be in traffic jams on S. Dixie Highway, when I was living down near The Falls, I'd have gladly spent a few hours a week at an office somewhere, say near Dadeland or South Miami, working on strategy and outreach to make sure that the future routes in the county would be based on common sense, natural boundaries and social networking, to create more places where South Florida could interact in a relaxed atmosphere.
You know, at a minimum, be able to ride a transit system with a Metro that actually (and originally) connected MIA to the downtown area and the business/legal districts or sports arenas and stadiums, as is common sense in most other communities, but NOT the natural order of things down here.
Now that so many people who live down here have no knowledge of what the county's Metrorail was supposed to be like, or the original promises for expansion, it's easy to think that the area's inherent political apathy and backwardness were the principal reason the stations were placed where they were, rather than purely political, ethnic and labor-based decisions, back before there were single-member districts on the Dade County Commission.
Almost 13 months ago, on September 25th, back in simpler times, before the Herald's Larry Lebowitz opened so many people's eyes here with his week-long series by connecting the dots on past negligence and incompetency in Miami having real world consequences for this area's growth and sprawl, there was a Miami-Dade County Citizens Advisory Committee meeting titled "Orange Line, Phase II, North Corridor Metrorail Extension Preliminary Engineering Phase."
See http://www.miamidade.gov/transit/corridor/n_corridor/n_meeting_schedule.asp and http://www.bizjournals.com/southflorida/stories/2007/09/10/daily39.html
Map of Orange Line is at: http://www.loopconsulting.com/projects/mdt/images/Map.jpg
That, of course, was the very line that was supposed to be finished in 2012 and, once finished, allow U-M students to get on the Metrorail near campus and go straight to the stadium formerly known as JRS, but which I've taken to calling Chez Huizenga for short.
(It's like the way people like me, i.e. traditionalists who know something about Dolphin owner Joe Robbie's many fights with the City of Miami in general and with Miami City Manager Cesar Odio in particular, who dared Robbie to leave -which I've described in my blog- still call the stadium in North Dade, Joe Robbie Stadium. Intentionally, to draw a distinction between what it originally represented, resolve and relief for Dolphin fans, and what it has become under Wayne Huizenga -a three-ring circus.)
NOT that this helpful bit of info about the Metrorail was EVER mentioned in any of the Herald or Sun-Sentinel articles or editorials before the move from the Orange Bowl was officially announced last year by U-M President Donna Shalala, nor mentioned by the local TV talking heads on the 6 and 11 o'clock news.
Maybe if the Daily Business Review had mentioned it, they'd have said so, since the local TV folks seem to really love stealing their material without attribution, where that seemed to be especially pronounced at WFOR, News4.
Thirteen months from now, I wonder what sort of things we will all know and accept as common knowledge about this area and the pols who are making such short-sighted transit decisions for the community's future growth.
Gist for another series for Larry?
This is, if nothing else, a target-rich environment!
In case you somehow missed it originally, after months of mind-numbing research, Larry gave
readers an exhaustive and cringe-worthy 'inside' look at Miami-Dade Transit issues, in his excellent front page series, one of the best the Herald has had.
With the help of interactive multi-media http://www.miamiherald.com/multimedia/news/transit/ he reveals in minute detail the hows and whys of the myriad broken promises made to voters and riders over the years, and connects-the-dots on the corruption, cronyism and political sleight-of-hand that have found such fertile ground here, even while transparency and accountability have not.
Sort of like so many promises and deadlines I've heard in Hallandale Beach since arriving here that have fallen by the wayside.
