MIAMI FL:Elevated Toll Express Lanes for I-95

The Golden Glades IC in the Opa-Locka/North Miami area, looking southward sees Florida’s Turnpike converge with I-95 and US-441/FL-7. Some traffic heads off west on FL-826 (the Palmetto Exwy) but the 20km remaining on I-95 into the central business area and just beyond is some of the most heavily congested roadway in the area. The only alternatives for about 12km west are signalized arterials US-1, FL-9 and FL953.

This is the major route to Miami International Airport and the Miami port area and Miami Beach as well as to the CBD from the north.

“This is the major route downtown, not that that many people go downtown, but it is the way they go to get to the port, the airport and other major activities south. It is basically the highway we built 30 years ago and the population, meanwhile, has nearly doubled,” Norman Wartman chairman of the Citizens Committee says.

Wartman says the $290m cost is for the elevated 2-lane using segmental box girder construction ($10m/lane-km) with Y-columns no more than 1.8m wide at their base in the median. This $290m assumes simple ramp connections to the Golden Glades IC, at FL-112/I-195 on the approach to downtown which makes connections west to the airport and east to Miami Beach, and ending at FL-836. If any elaborate or extended ramps are needed then the cost of the project will be more than the $290m, Wartman said.

I-95 carries over 200k veh/day weekdays on some portions of this route. Most of it is 2x5-lanes though one of the lanes each direction is poorly enforced HOV2. Wartman says the present HOV2 lane should be converted into a regular lane since it is virtually that anyway, and efforts at enforcement of a striped off HOV result in huge disruptions of traffic flow.

Wartman says the only way to sensibly enforce HOV is to barrier it off, so the enforcement can conducted at entry and exit points.

“We envisage the elevated lanes as allowing HOV3 free, HOV2 half toll and single occupant vehicle full toll, and the road would be variably tolled along the lines of I-15 in San Diego with posted maximum tolls per time of day, with actual tolls varying to assure free flow conditions. The demand is strongest southbound mornings, northbound evenings when it could be 2-lanes one direction, but other times it could be both directions, so we want a movable Jersey barrier.”

Wartman says the planners and politicians of south Florida are gradually shaking themselves out of a love affair with rail during which they have sadly neglected realistic road improvements including the need to upgrade bus service. He says bus service can be improved beyond the level of service of rail, at a fraction of the cost of rail, by piggybacking on a HOT lanes network. Wartman is a former deputy chair of the board of the Miami Dade Exwy Auth (MDXA) and a well-known local businessman, who played a major role in the recent defeat of a proposed sales tax increase to fund rail projects and eliminate tolls. The measure lost at the polls 68% to 32% and has reinvigorated toll road plans.

He says the I-95 HOT lanes should be just the first of many similar projects, which will provide a whole new transp network in the area. The I-95 HOT lanes could be built by the Miami-Dade Exwy Auth, FDOT’s Turnpike division, by investors, or some other combined entity. The important thing is that it gets fully considered as an option.

Miami-Dade Exwy Authority’s two top officials chairman Sonny Holtzman and exec-dir Servando Parapar are traveling to southern California this month to visit toll express lanes on CA-91 and the HOT lanes on I-15 in San Diego. The MDX has previously indicated its plans (see TRnl#33 Nov 98 p33) for HOT lanes: (1) a single lane reversible Houston style HOT lane would be built in 14km of the central median of FL-836 from the fringe HEFT turnpike (run by FDOT) in east to NW72nd Av. (2) A pair of HOT lanes are planned for the 12km of the FL874 South Dade Exwy. (3) MDXA also proposes to build and operate another reversible single HOT lane on FL826, the untolled north-south Palmetto Exwy. [Contact Norman Wartman beeper 954 546 4465, MDXA 305 637 3277]