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Showing posts with label transportation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label transportation. Show all posts

Thursday, December 5, 2019

In Miami, An Unspeakable Tragedy in a Time of Thanksgiving - South Florida suffers a grievous loss. The news about the death of young and idealistic Alejandra Agreda literally broke my heart Saturday night. @VirginTrainsMIA

In Miami, An Unspeakable Tragedy in a Time of Thanksgiving - South Florida suffers a grievous loss. The news about the death of young and idealistic Alejandra Agreda literally broke my heart Saturday night. @VirginTrainsMIA

 So now South Florida leans forward towards a 2020 that will begin with one less concerned, committed civic activist here that's ready, eager and able to make a positive difference on behalf of others in a part of America that's known for its shallowness and selfishness.



I heard from Alejandra/Bryan regularly via Twitter and received dozens and dozens of followups and DMs several times a month. Sometimes, when she was particularly vexed or exorcised about something in particular, I'd receive several of them in one day.

It's fair to say that nobody in South Florida Liked & Retweeted my tweets and blog posts more than Alejandra did, even my non-transit and non-public policy related ones.
But I think at the heart of all of her her questions, to me and to others she tweeted to and emailed,  was a curiosity on her part to understand something fundamental about South Florida.
Something that reminded me of myself when I was that age, namely, her asking me very good and pointed questions abt why SO many things in South Florida -especially regarding public transit- seem SO... perpetually counter-intuitive.

Why was it that even relatively simple things seem to take 3-4 times longer to do here in South Florida than usually seemed to be the case in most other cities in the U.S. and overseas?
Right, besides the usual issues involving corruption, incompetency, and a serious lack of necessary public/govt. oversight!

Once I finally figured out that Ale really was still just a high school student, I told her that I myself had wondered why such a high percentage of South Florida elected officials over the years weren't so much problem-solvers but rather buck-passers and problem-creators.
That I'd wondered that same thing ever since I worked so hard for so long on the Jimmy Carter and Lawton Chiles campaigns in Miami-Dade and South Florida in 1976.

 Yes, back when I was a precocious, well-read sophomore at North Miami Beach Senior High that the professional campaign staff from Washington, D.C. and the Atlanta national campaign HQ always said looked and acted like I was already in college.  Which pleased me to no end., of course.
Combined with the tons of coffee -and a never-ending supply of boxes of peanuts- that positive feedback was more than enough positivity to keep me deal with much of the drudgery in thoise pre-PC, pre-Internet days working over 7 hours a day after schol at Carter-Mondale HQ in North Miami Beach on N.E. 167th Street & NE 6th Avenue, directly behind the iconic Krispy Kreme doughnuts site there that everyone knew and depended upon, including me.

I was honest with Ale and told her I'd met lots of prominent local South Florida pols from working on the campaign and especially doing highly-visible work as part of Walter Mondale's advance team on his hectic South Florida visits from the airport to a million places in 2-3 days.
The truth was that many people whom I'd really expected to like and admire, and had from afar, via Tv or newspaper or magazine articles were, up close, unfortunately, nothing less than... truly appalling people. And dumber than rocks.
Not unlike today in South Florida, unfortunately.

She'd ask me if it'd always been that way, since she knew from what I wrote online that I knew a LOT of insider dope and had a great memory for what things were REALLY like in 1970's and '80's in South Florida, as opposed to how many in the current South South Florida news media recall it publicly. Revisionism.

She was particularly interested in how Metrorail was sold to the Dade public as a ballot issue, compared to its resulting inadequate reality for most of county, esp NE and NW Miami-dade, since she knew I'd written a lot about it and had commented on it at many places online.
Simply put, promises made, promises broken...

Alejandra's Dad Freddy's tweets, which Billy (Corben) linked to at the top, made me cry so very more than I have in quite some time. Really.

Her Dad, Freddy, sent out a very sad and upsetting note out late Saturday night, at bottom, to 
some people in South Florida involved in public policy, politics, govt. and media announcing 
that his only child, Bryan/Alejandra had committed suicide last Tuesday, and had jumped in front 
of one of the Metrorail cars she loved riding in and writing about -and criticizing.
Probably one they'd ridden in dozens and dozens of times.

The news really hit me and I cried much more than I was expecting to, as I read Freddy's note about how Bryan/Alejandra had been bullied and mistreated, which I guess I should've expected, especially
in a place as Hispanic as where we are.

And what really hits you so hard is that the last two tweets she sent right before she jumped - "i could use a hug right now"


and "bon voyage"




Wow! Me being me, a very empathetic ENFP, those tweets hit me like a ton of bricks!

Apparently Ale's father was, eventually, okay with the idea of a "transition," or, at least had reconciled himself to it, but because Ale was 17, well, obviously, there's lots of things involved that could not be done legally right now.

I wound up staying up late Saturday night/Sunday morning writing down some thoughts -some of which I've included here- and shared them with a bunch of the same people her Dad sent his original letter to who'd interacted with Alejandra.

So yeah, I've been feeling very down the last few days, not least because this news has also made me rethink of all the things I knew about someone I loved whose suicide attenpt and the ricky road afterwards, not least, because many of her friends turned their backs on her prior to that because they'd told many times that the person she was getting involved in was trouble. And was.
So, what are we left with? A bright and caring 17-year old kid who wanted Miami/South Florida to be better than it was, and who was utter fascinated by public policy and transit... commits suicide.
By jumping in front of a train she probably had ridden in at least once before.

How the hell do you even begin to make sense of that?
I can only imagine how totally devastated Alejandra's family is right now.

No need to respond to this post, I just needed to get this out of my system.

















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Alejandra's Celebration of Life / Memorial service will be held this Saturday (December 7th) at Mapsons Funeral Home, 3500 SW 8th Street, Miami, Florida.
https://www.gofundme.com/f/alejandra-agredo-miami-riders-alliance


 If you consider her ideas and value the huge amount of dedication and time she invested in building her non-profit and writing her application please donate to allow her team to keep working on it. Thank you so much for reading. Her family and those who ride trains and buses will really appreciate it. Thank you.

https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/obituaries/article237935779.html

https://twitter.com/Kounikishi/status/1200699123013435392?s=20

https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=2536385439750099&id=100001360044353






— RIP My Little Heart 💔 (@Kounikishi) December 5, 2019

@BillyCorben, @Kounikishi, @RidersMIA, @VirginTrainsMIA, Alejandra Agreda, Billy Corben, Brightline, City of Miami, development, Florida, Metromover, Metrorail, Miami-Dade County, Miami-Dade Metrorail, redevelopment, RidersMIA, SMART Growth, South Florida, teen suicide, transit, Tri-Rail, Twitter, transportation, Virgin Trains
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Wednesday, April 3, 2019

#Ultra2019 debacle in #Miami is a sober reminder: the transit chaos in South Florida never ends! Brightline's awful decision that it should a run commuter rail connecting populous Eastern cities near US-1 on FEC tracks in Broward, Miami-Dade and Palm Beach counties, makes the past decade of incompetency & bad decisions by Tri-Rail and the South Florida East Coast Corridor/SFECC study seem almost minor in comparison, though they DO have a lot to answer for to commuters/taxpayers, too. And the MPOs? Forget believing that they care what you think or want. They are the very picture of a runaway, non-accountable govt. agency. I know of what I speak!


#Ultra2019 debacle in #Miami is a sober reminder: the transit chaos in South Florida never ends! 
Brightline's awful decision that it should a run commuter rail connecting populous Eastern cities near US-1 on FEC tracks in Broward, Miami-Dade and Palm Beach counties, makes the past decade of incompetency & bad decisions by Tri-Rail and the South Florida East Coast Corridor/SFECC study seem almost minor in comparison, though they DO have a lot to answer for to commuters/taxpayers, too. And the MPOs? 
Forget believing that they care what you think or want. They are the very picture of a runaway, non-accountable govt. agency. I know of what I speak!
Updated April 10th, 2019

  

More to come on those observations next week! 






































































































































Yes, can you tell that's one of my biggest longtime pet peeves?




















































As you can see below in emails and blog posts I wrote about him and his creepy behavior, and his organization's unsatisfactory performance, I have some history with Greg Stuart, the head of the Broward MPO. 
It's the "federally mandated transportation planning body that was welded to the county by a staffing contract since its establishment by the Florida Legislature in 1977. Its 19 members, mostly elected city and county leaders, control approximately hundreds of millions in federal transportation system funds and decide which Broward road and improvement projects get built and which don’t."

 As I noted in my blog post of February 6th, 2011, titled, Managed lanes: Broward MPO & FHA up to patronizing mischief on Thursday that'll cost you $$$ to drive on primary roads -the ones YOU already paid for
http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2011/02/managed-lanes-broward-mpo-fha-up-to.html

Did the Broward MPO have any PUBLIC meetings scheduled in  in Hollywood or Hallandale Beach in 2009 before this came up?
No, there weren't ANY in all of southeast Broward County.
Satisfied?  

Below a particularly germane excerpt from a 2018 blog post here at Halandale Beach Blog
about transit and transportation policy and execution and how poorly it's thought out and administered in South Florida.
http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2018/05/a-rising-tide-may-lift-all-boats-but.html
My factual blog posts also earned me a lot of animosity from high-ranking people at local transit organizations -like the Broward MPO among others- for daring to hold a mirror up to their consistently dismal performances given the resources they command and their near-anonymous hold on power.
Trust me, there are few govt/agencies in South Florida who are more used to people telling them how wonderful they were/are than the folks at the Broward MPO.

Which, of course, explains a lot.
The evidence of their collective failure is all around us in Broward.
Their failure to take other groups, agencies and elected officials to task publicly and highlight policies and methods that are counter-productive.

Instead, the Broward MPO is known largely by a sub-niche of people within the political power structure, and as I've tweeted about a few times over the years, is often NOT mentioned in the Miami Herald or the South Florida Sun-Sentinel for years at a time. YEARS.
Despite their stranglehold on policies and seemingly endless resources.
Where's the media oversight and accountability? MIA.

Though I could be wrong, I'm pretty sure I'm the only one of you reading this today to be criticized 
in public by the head of the Broward MPO after I detailed his and his agency's many failings at a Hallandale Beach City Commission meeting some years ago.
Promises, promises, but where were tangible results that Broward residents, taxpayers and Small Business owners actually wanted? MIA.

Thin-skinned Greg Stuart waited until I could no longer speak before blasting me, then obfuscated instead of simply answering the questions I posed to him because the truth was on my side, not his. As both of us knew at the time.
His aides at the time were not exactly the pick of the litter, either, considering their snide remarks at the time that showed that they were more cronies than transportation experts.

Needless to say, then-Mayor Joy Cooper -since removed from office by Gov. Scott after her arrest for numerous felonies- just chuckled from the dais, completely aware that she could prevent me from refuting what Stuart was saying, but unaware that Stuart was, in fact, making a monkey out of HER and the entire Commission.
In short, he took advantage of her great ignorance and was flat-out lying to her -to her face- while he also tried to make an example out of me publicly for daring to challenge him and his band of thin-skinned bureaucrats.  


Never heard of the Broward MPO or Greg Stuart? Read this eye-raising article that first appeared in the then-broward now Florida Bulldog

 FloridaBulldog
Whistleblower probes expose bad blood behind county, MPO split
By Dan Christensen, FloridaBulldog.org
September 15, 2010

 Hardly anyone noticed last month when Independence Day arrived for the Metropolitan Planning Organization, Broward’s powerful but obscure transportation agency.

No politicians made speeches; no one marched in a parade. But it turns out that there were plenty of fireworks behind the scenes at the agency that largely decides what county roads get built or improved.

As the MPO was breaking away last spring, county employees filed a pair of whistleblower complaints accusing top MPO officials of mismanagement, unprofessionalism and cronyism.

The names of the whistleblowers are not public by law. But reports of county internal investigations obtained by Broward Bulldog using Florida’s public records law expose a bureaucratic fault line affecting hundreds of millions of dollars in public transportation spending, and future planning efforts.

 Read the rest of the article at:
http://www.floridabulldog.org/2010/09/whistleblower-probes-expose-bad-blood-behind-county-mpo-split/










Ultra Music festival, #Ultra2019, @ultra, #EDM, Miami-Dade County, Broward County, transportation, commuter rail, Tri-Rail Coastal, Broward MPO,  SFECC, Miami, Virginia Key,  #FyreFestival2, Key Biscayne, traffic, Billy Corben, @BillyCorben, #OceanDrive, Metrorail, Brightline, @iflymia, @FLLFlyer, Noah Pransky, SunPass, FDOT, Miami Beach, All Aboard Florida, Transit Miami, @transitmiami, FixMetroMDT, @FixMetroMDT, Jeff Brandes, @JeffreyBrandes, Brittany Wallman, @BrittanyWallman, @GetAroundSafely, @MarketUrbanism, Brian Bandell, @SFBJRealEstate, Buddy Nevins, @Buddynevins, RED BROWARD, @RedBroward, Larry Barszewski, @lbarszewski, Miami Int'l Airport, @iflymia, Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood Int'l Airport, @FLLFlyer, City of Hollywood,FL, @cohgov, Josh Levy, Mayor of Hollywood @JoshLevyHlwd, Broward County Commission, @browardinfo, Miami-Dade Board of County Commissioners, @MiamiDadeBCC, Zara Larsson, @zaralarsson
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