The way you design a street matters, and what you build along it and overhead matters, too. All these send messages about our priorities and values.
Our town of South Miami is pretty cool, with the only traditional main street just across US Highway 1 from both the Metrorail and the future Underline linear park/bikeway. There’s a debate raging locally about whether to build a “pedestrian bridge” arcing over US Highway 1, the six-lane street that splits South Miami into two pieces where we really need to unite them. But is a ped bridge the way to do it?
Architectural concepts shown at a recent South Miami City Commission meeting.
A city commissioner asked neighbors to weigh in on the ped bridge idea, so here are my notes:
1. Design matters.
If a pedestrian bridge is a done deal, and no amount of reasoning or budgeting can dissuade our leaders from building it, then at least make it excellent.
Seeing the two architectural renderings recently, a) one senses that the decision to have a bridge might already have been made, and b) if it is inevitable, a lot more work needs to go into the design. I decided to make this point #1 in case none of the other points below withstand your scrutiny. But please, consider skipping ahead first and then coming back to read the rest of this paragraph.
If there has to be a bridge, you must recognize that this architectural feature will be forever imprinted in the minds of everyone as the gateway to and symbol of the city. Can’t it visually have something to do with its context? It should be classic and timeless, or it will look dated in no time. It must not look corporate. It should be designed to look good even when it gets wet and weathered and when a mix of rain and tailpipe exhaust streaks down it. It should feel gracious and generous, not cramped and cheap and expedient. Most of all it should feel sturdy and confident, not trying to defy gravity or pretend weightlessness over such a long span. Given that at the SW 71st Street crossing location there is a median in the center of US1, one wonders if a two-span structure supported by a center tower might make a better composition and a more doable project; that deserves exploration.
Rarely, but sometimes, a bridge is appropriate.
But…
2. A terrible highway or a grand signature avenue?
A real city must never abandon movement by people on the ground plane. A real city is experienced at ground level. In Charlotte, as in many other cities, experimental 1970s pedestrian bridges have been removed. We will never recover US1 as a proper avenue if the idea is that the ground level is for cars but people on foot (and bikes?) are supposed to be in the sky. How can the City demand that redevelopers along US1 devise buildings that have doors, windows and storefronts facing US1 (like in any mature city—and like the Holsum Bakery historically did, facing US1), instead of parking garages, blank walls, and back-of-house functions, if by constructing bridges the City makes obvious its belief that US1 is just for cars?
Historically, US1 was faced by the fronts of buildings. The long-demolished Holsum Bakery set the standard.
3. Keep the at-grade crossings. Pledge to upgrade them.
Under no circumstances should the at-grade crossings at Sunset Drive, SW 70th Street and Red Road be compromised or fenced or traded-down in any way just to get people to use a bridge. Instead, those crossings should be intensively upgraded, a new one created at SW 73rd Street, and much better ones installed at SW 62nd Avenue and SW 80th Street. Given the record of breakdowns of elevators at our Metrorail stations, I find myself banking on crossing at grade pretty often whether there’s a bridge or not, and I bet a lot of folks in wheelchairs feel the same way. Imagine the objections over compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act once someone counts the number of days per year the aging elevators are out of order—especially if by then the at-grade crossings are officially discouraged.
4. How should we spend money?
The bridge enthusiasts include a lot of motoring-only people who rarely walk and bike even less. If they did, they’d understand why ped bridges rarely work as intended. But ped bridges are like Homer Simpson’s monorail: They are fancy showpiece infrastructure that’s ridiculously costly, yet somehow curiously popular in the idea stage, despite being almost impossible to implement and maintain, partly because they are in reality hardly worth the trouble. This bridge in particular has become a safe harbor for political figures. Motor-voters get all excited and say “Yeah, let’s do it” and then, well, if it isn’t really workable, practical or affordable and doesn’t get done, then the commissioner can say It’s Not My Fault. (“Sorry, we didn’t get the grant.”) But if it does get built and is seldom used or looks bad or cracks or worse, they can blame the county, FDOT, or the architects. This safe-either-way formula has led us to the place where at least two city commissioners built their campaigns around their pro-bridge platform. I’m realistic enough to realize it may be futile to point out the shortcomings of the bridge idea anymore. But just in case: Do you want showpiece infrastructure that is really worth the trouble and money and actually makes things better? Redesign the streets. Plant trees.
5. Design speed matters.
The pedestrian fatalities map from Dangerous by Design, 2021
There’s no disputing that today the intersections are too uncomfortable and perhaps genuinely dangerous [see the Dangerous by Design interactive map, which documents one fatality since 2008 at Sunset Drive (in 2018) and two fatalities at Red Road (in 2017)]. But so is the street in between the intersections. At least one fatality involved not crossing US1, but merely walking along it. US1 is alarmingly too fast, and yet so much focus is given to the peak hour capacity and shortening travel times. County officials celebrated the recent installation of advanced automated signal timing on US1, which squeezed extra peak-hour capacity out of the intersections (as long as you were trying to drive along the road, instead of walking, biking or driving across it). Working within the limitations of the existing number of lanes (six! plus turn lanes) they managed to wring out improved drive times from down south to downtown. It’s impressive technology. Yet I ask, were any of the minutes saved along the corridor used to expand the crossing signal times for pedestrians, anywhere? Or did all the benefit accrue to motorists alone?
Meanwhile, consider the rest of the day and night. All that asphalt is a clear invitation to excessive speeds in the off-peak times. When someone makes a mistake, whether they are drunk or not, their high speed ups the mayhem. We take it for granted that US1 is forever meant to be a super-speedy facility. We shouldn’t. Here’s why:
When a motorist driving 20mph makes an error and strikes a pedestrian, the result is a fatality 5% of the time. When they are driving 30mph, the result is a dead pedestrian 45% of the time. At 45mph, the motorist kills that pedestrian 85% of the time. Car-on-car collisions are similar in that the higher the speed, the worse the injuries and fatalities. That is why 40,000+ people a year are dying in the streets of the United States, and our state, with its Teflon-coated roads, has the worst record in the nation in this public safety crisis.
Don’t get alarmed, commuters. Yes, I said slow down US1. Speeding up just to catch the taillights of the car in front of you at the next traffic signal might feel satisfying, but it doesn’t get you to your destination any faster. That’s because at around 26 or 27mph, we get the most efficient use of a lane, that is, the most cars past a point in space per hour; go any faster, and as you spread out, you eat up any gains. Traffic engineers will admit this; if you want to look it up, start by searching for “Speed / Flow Capacity diagram.”
Where did all those commuters from way down south that ream their way through South Miami twice a day come from, anyway? They are the embodiment of a cold reality: the statewide program of building wide, fast roads (instead of transit), in hopes of making it possible for motorists to freely flow, has only encouraged them to roam farther. Widening roads like US1 facilitated the sprawl. It’s called Induced Travel Demand. Traffic engineers will admit this too. It is why US1 should never have been widened so much in the first place. Ultimately, we should investigate repurposing a couple of those lanes. But that is a topic for another post.
So: Why is the big idea getting pedestrians up in the air away from our streets, instead of slowing down the cars to a reasonable pace? Because these bridges are not really built for the benefit of pedestrians:
6. These bridges aren’t really “pedestrian bridges.”
They’re structures built as band-aids after the streets of a city are savagely deformed for cars, built after the fact to give lip service to pedestrian friendliness. But insidiously, they usually become an excuse to further reduce the red-signal time for motorists on the highways they span. The pedestrian bridge is all about getting pesky pedestrians out of the way so motorists can zoom along without waiting so long for humans to cross. If South Miami’s debate were really about making humans happy on foot, there’d be an accompanying campaign to plant street trees on the bland, bald streets that lead to our Metrorail station and these very intersections.
Green time on US1 has long been the transpocracy’s only priority; that’s why the “Go” signal phase is so short and infrequent for pedestrians. If our local and state governments want to send a powerful message that pedestrian comfort and safety are the top priorities, more important than pass-through “throughput capacity” for outsider motorists, then
As easy as changing the settings in the computer: Lengthen the crossing phase.
redesign the meager at-grade crossings for high visibility,
lengthen the duration of the “Go” signal phase for US1 pedestrian crossings (which just requires tweaking dials on a computer), and
plant a lot of street trees and improve sidewalks.
If our governments want to send a powerful message that safe and comfortable cycling is a priority, then retrofit Red Road and other streets with protected bike lanes.
These measures can all be accomplished at a fraction of the cost of a single pedestrian bridge.
7. Bridges aren’t as convenient and direct as people think.
Bleak SW 71st St can be great someday, but it’s not yet
The newest proposed alignment for a bridge at SW 71st Street, if it fits at all between the Metrorail dripline and the US1 curbline, is one-third better than previous proposals, if on its west end it includes a direct entrance/exit from within the Metrorail station to the bridge elevator doors, with no looping around. (However, that means a solution will have to be found for those on foot or bike who are not coming from or going to Metrorail, and thus can’t enter the station, and will have to loop around.) Then, once one exits the bridge on its east end at 71st Street, where will they be? On a sad, car-dominated alley. 71st Street is (at least today) a half-built nowhere with deeply-setback one-story buildings poking out of parking lots—where our pedestrians will find there’s no clear route to the main attractions on Sunset Drive and 73rd Street. If there is to be a bridge landing here, at least the City should couple that with a concerted redevelopment/infill effort. Someday, if they ever follow the Hometown Plan, 71st Street will be great. But it’s not, yet.
Meanwhile, can we reasonably expect walkers who are already crossing directly to the attractions at Sunset Drive to go out of their way north to the 71st Street bridge, wait for an elevator, cross, wait for another elevator, and then double back to Sunset and Dorn Avenue? See “Keep the At-Grade Crossings” above.
The narrow space between dripline and curbline, where the structure, elevator, landing, stairs, and walkway would have to fit.
8. The space is really, really tight. Expect delays.
The distance between the dripline of the Metrorail northbound tracks and the curbline next to the southbound lanes of US1 is very, very small. Fitting a structure with an elevator, stair tower, landings and so forth in that space might not be impossible, but it will be like threading a needle if it’s doable at all. To implement it, this will require the closing of one or more lanes of traffic for an extended period during construction. (Add up all that delay, over many months, and compare it to adding a few seconds to the “Go” signal phase for pedestrians at SW 72nd Street and SW 80th Street. Apparently, we are willing to slow down motorists on US1 after all.) In addition, implementing this bridge in such tight quarters could also require realigning the whole of the road itself to correct lane widths and get enough space. (Add up that delay too.) In that case, shouldn’t we just fix the whole street?
If lane realignment turns out to be the solution, why not go ahead and redesign US1 as a beautiful, crossable, tree-lined avenue in the first place, instead of building a bridge? Or at least, worst case, in addition to building a bridge? Lane realignments do happen, even on an FDOT facility like US1, as we saw recently just south of Douglas Road in Coral Gables.
9. Divider or seam?
“The popularity of pedestrian bridges, in a nutshell.” Photographer unknown
Transportation expert Jim Charlier (Google him) famously quipped that “the primary benefit of `pedestrian’ bridges is to provide shade for the pedestrians that will insist on crossing down below at grade.” Since crossing in the sky is an unnatural act, traffic engineers devise ways to force people to do it. One common way to force more users onto a bridge is to fence off the at-grade alternatives, as has been done at the other intersections near bridges on US1, including at Mariposa. This sends a terrible message: Drive as fast as you want on US1—we’re keeping the regular walking-around folks out of your way.
For years people would sprint through the bushes under the Vizcaya “hamster” bridge rather than use its uncomfortable, indirect route; the transpocrats eventually kept adding layer upon layer of fortification to prevent this, feeling that the close proximity to the I-95 terminus left them with no other options.
But if the reason to build a bridge in South Miami is to symbolically unify the two halves of our city, but then we allow the agencies to fortify and wall off our city in this way, we will end up with an even more divided, more fragmented city instead. That’s the opposite of the goal and of the message we want to send. If we want to unify the city, we have to convert US1 from a divider into a joint or seam. The way to do this is to redesign US1 as a beautiful, tree-lined, grand, signature avenue.
10. Misreading the scale.
Michigan Avenue, between the Chicago Hilton & Grant Park, has the same number of lanes as US1 in SoMi.
A six-lane street can be made reasonably crossable at grade. Many of the grand tree-lined boulevards of Paris have even more lanes; the Champs-Elysees is sixteen lanes wide. Michigan Avenue in front of the Chicago Hilton is seven lanes wide. Yet crossing from the Hilton to Grant Park feels perfectly natural, like pedestrians are meant to do it.
Hurry, we’ve got some cars to move through here.
Peering through their windshields, some people in South Miami tend to assume a six-lane street is too hard to cross because they see the cars moving through the intersection on the green signal are driving too fast, the lanes are too wide, there is no legit mid-crossing refuge, and (this is the crucial point) the pedestrian “Go” signal phase doesn’t last nearly long enough. Let the pedestrians decide.
11. One more risky bridge?
The FIU 8th Street bridge collapse, 2018. Miami Herald photo by Pedro Portal PPORTAL@MIAMIHERALD.COM (permission requested)
An effective way to make national news headlines is for a bridge to fail. (Google “FIU bridge tragedy.”) Another is to have a viral story about a person leaving the elevator and getting mugged midspan, trapped by two or more cooperating criminals coming from opposite directions. Short of placing a security officer fulltime in the bridge itself, or manning an ungodly number of cameras, how can this be prevented?
12. Is there ever a time or place where ped/bike bridges are appropriate?
Yes. There are places where continuity and functionality for those walking and running and biking on trails simply can’t be obtained without a grade-separated bridge. Constructing the bridge on the Underline/M-Path over the Snapper Creek Expressway entrance was appropriate; when it was built, it solved the notorious “Dadeland Gap” for cyclists on the East Coast Greenway. The West Orange Trail has a very effective bridge over Florida’s Turnpike, where the pedestrian realm at grade has already been permanently surrendered. Our own design for the Ludlam Trail has bridges over corridors where continuity demands it (but in addition to, not instead of, excellent at-grade crossings). And who can forget the Ponte Vecchio in Florence (over a big river) or the Rialto in Venice (over a big canal), both destinations in themselves? But here are the problems: Downtown South Miami isn’t one of those situations where functional crossing is impossible at grade, and US1 is not irretrievable for pedestrians like, say, the Turnpike. Squeezing in an elevator-only bridge at 71st Street between the Metrorail and US1 where users have to go out of their way to snake around to it isn’t going to create continuity, it’s the opposite. Other locations that have been explored upstream and downstream have even worse disadvantages.
13. Would this use all of our City’s PTP (CITT) funds? What’s the funding plan? How does it reflect our values?
It has been said that the City’s whole share of funds from the Peoples’ Transportation Plan / Citizens Independent Transportation Trust, for many years running, would have to be used to finance the bridge. If confirmed, that would mean those special sales tax funds are no longer available to run the fabulous Freebee electric shuttle, or to make crucial citywide improvements for walking or cycling, or to renovate Sunset Drive as part of downtown revitalization, or to implement the rest of the City’s Intermodal Transportation Plan. That would be a bad trade.
—Victor Dover FAICP