What's wrong with this picture? As far as MVB is concerned, nothing. Recent talk about building a $200 million trolley car system in Miami is getting some mixed reactions from Miami commissioners-- and well it should. We're against the trolley car for a host of reasons which can be found here. We're for a Disney-style monorail system linking Miami and the Beaches which can be found here. That $200 mill could help make a high-speed link between Miami and the Beaches a reality much sooner than later-- especially if some forward thinking visionaries could lure Disney in to co-build BayLink with the promise of land for a hotel on the beach and a port on Watson Island. Getting a Disney cruise ship-- or any cruise ship for that matter-- to make Miami a stop instead of only a point of departure will benefit everyone in the county-- especially when tourists and locals can get back and forth between Miami and the Beaches quickly and with little hassle.
Wednesday, January 31, 2007
Nix The Trolley and Put The 200 Mill into BayLink
What's wrong with this picture? As far as MVB is concerned, nothing. Recent talk about building a $200 million trolley car system in Miami is getting some mixed reactions from Miami commissioners-- and well it should. We're against the trolley car for a host of reasons which can be found here. We're for a Disney-style monorail system linking Miami and the Beaches which can be found here. That $200 mill could help make a high-speed link between Miami and the Beaches a reality much sooner than later-- especially if some forward thinking visionaries could lure Disney in to co-build BayLink with the promise of land for a hotel on the beach and a port on Watson Island. Getting a Disney cruise ship-- or any cruise ship for that matter-- to make Miami a stop instead of only a point of departure will benefit everyone in the county-- especially when tourists and locals can get back and forth between Miami and the Beaches quickly and with little hassle.
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4 comments:
I could swear that's Fort Lauderdale's wall in the picture.
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"I could swear that's Fort Lauderdale's wall in the picture."
LOL. That's totally in Fort Lauderdale. There's no sidewalks with walls in South Beach.
"especially if some forward thinking visionaries could lure Disney in to co-build BayLink with the promise of land for a hotel on the beach and a port on Watson Island. Getting a Disney cruise ship"
That's a great idea. I'd vote YES for a monorail like that.
That might be nice for cross-bay traffic, but it does nothing for local mainland traffic, which is what the Streetcar project is designed in part to accommodate. The nice part about the existing Baylink proposal is that since it can coexist with the Miami Streetcar and it could run partly along the same track, a myriad of alignments and routes can be overlain that go to different destinations and increase the capacity of the system.
Plus since part of the proposed Streetcar alignment circulates locally, it can provide better connections with Government Center, meaning it can easily accept transfers from Metrorail and Metromover, and also pick up local riders downtown who wish to head to the beach.
And mind you, the Streetcar project is a City of Miami project, using funds allocated to it from the county half-penny sales tax. The City would be wise to spend its allocated funds to improve the transportation within the city and provide more fixed-guideway transportation within its borders. BayLink is a County project, and if it wasn't for David Dermer idiotically protesting it and pissing off the MPO, we might have seen a more realistic timeframe to seeing such a system come into fruition.
Okay, so two out of three readers of MVB discovered what was wrong with the picture. Granted, it was a trick question, but let's not lose sight of the grander vision: fast and easy transportation to and from the beach with the proven and way-cool Disney monorail.
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