We received great inputs from the Friends that have been reviewing the draft South Bayshore Drive plans presented by Miami-Dade County’s Miguel Soria, Assistant Director for Highway Engineering in a community input online meeting on June 21, 2023. The designs pertain to South Bayshore Drive from Fresh Market to Mercy Hospital. The online meeting had 323 Friends sign up to learn and share their comments! If you missed it you can still review the presentation here. If you want to get into the nitty-gritty details, that’s great too. You can find the (partial) engineering plans for the project here. (176 sheets)
It’s really impressive how the smallest detail (or big-picture idea) can make a huge difference. Don’t assume someone else already thought of your insight, because they didn’t. Only you have your point of view. That’s one of the things that makes Friends special.
Three themes appeared to gather the most attention, but no item is too small to consider. Details matter and your perspective could identify and resolve a problem before it starts. The three main themes of public comment were:
- Safety of pedestrians and cyclists due to placement and width of shared or dedicated paths. (The concept diagrammed above represented an idealized goal, but was not realized everywhere.)
- Placing the pumping station farther from the roadway and housing. Improving South Bayshore drainage is the main purpose of this project. (See pages 15-17 of the presentation )
- Calls to prevent traffic diversion into quiet neighborhoods during construction (2026-2027).
Although the meeting was extended to include more live comments, not everyone got a chance to speak. So the Friends created an online comment sheet that many of you used to share your ideas.
Here is a link to all the comments we received.
We’ll ensure that your comments reach the Miami-Dade County project team. In addition to facilitating and collecting detailed comments, we’re sharing with your today the Friend’s letter to the County’s managers and elected leadership. We’re trying to correctly represent the community’s shared vision as well as those points of discussion that will have to be resolved.
You can read the Friend’s official letter here.
Wider bikes along side cars. Bikes not to use SUP unless going slowly