E-scooter charges help fund safeguarded bicycle lanes in downtown Miami

Dive Short:

• Miami will increase about three miles of shielded bike and scooter lanes on hectic downtown corridors as portion of a new plan partly funded by service fees on electrical scooters. 
• Underneath a program authorized by the Miami-Dade Board of County Commissioners last week, the city will set up concrete boundaries along the new lanes and incorporate pedestrian ramps to adjacent sidewalks. All pedestrian crossings in the influenced location will also be upgraded to maximize visibility. 
• The approximately $2 million updates, construction of which has previously began, will be partly funded by $1 million from the city of Miami’s micromobility fund. The remainder will be paid out for with street impression charges.

Dive Insight:

Florida is dwelling to some of the country’s most perilous towns for pedestrians, according to a Intelligent Growth The united states report. Critics have dinged Miami for not pursuing via on a 2009 Bicycle Master System intended to “rework Miami into a bicycle welcoming city,” the extensive greater part of which has not been crafted. 

The not too long ago accredited secured lanes will be installed together a few miles of downtown streets, covering spots in which there is already major use of scooters and bikes by people and readers. 

“This is very required. Miami motorists are not pretty secure. I’ve ridden a bicycle, I’ve ridden a scooter in downtown Miami and I sense unsafe on the streets,” mentioned Kevin Amézaga, government director of the mobility team Miami Riders Alliance. “We accept that in downtown Miami, vehicles are not able to be the way we develop, but we need to give people safe options.”

The objective is to at some point make an comprehensive network of micromobility lanes — including bollards, concrete obstacles and painted bicycle packing containers — that would join significant sections of downtown, relatively than simply just incorporating lanes to a handful of streets, explained Carlos Cruz-Casas, assistant director for mobility in the Miami-Dade County Division of Transportation and Community Is effective. The “proactive” work, he reported, will help produce “a more inclusive transportation network” and also more the county’s Eyesight Zero ambitions, which seek to eliminate targeted traffic fatalities and serious accidents by 2030. 

“When we’re searching back again to realize the leads to of collisions and crashes, we are also developing the infrastructure to avoid them so that we do not have to depend data later on on,” he explained. The division is shifting at “a million miles an hour” to revamp the county’s transportation network for protection and sustainability ambitions, he extra.

Miami has viewed a number of variations in micromobility over the past yr. The county suspended use of shared vehicles in the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, returning them to town streets in October 2020. The fleets were being then suspended for a shorter interval around the commencing of 2021 more than problems about underage riders and sidewalk muddle, the Miami Herald reported. The latter pause led to new rules about sidewalk litter and distribution of cars in the course of downtown, as perfectly as new velocity boundaries. 

In the summer of 2020, commissioners debated utilizing the micromobility service fees to cover projected price range shortfalls due to the fact of the coronavirus pandemic, Miami Nowadays Information reported. Micromobility supporters, nonetheless, argued the income must continue being siloed for revamping the extensive-overdue bike grasp prepare and eventually the budget deficit was decrease than anticipated. 

As scooters have turn into extra popular and proven transportation tools in towns, transportation departments all over the region are rethinking their infrastructure strategies to construct dedicated lanes or paths that can accommodate them. Quite a few towns — like Indianapolis, Atlanta and Santa Monica, California, — have essential micromobility operators include service fees or pay out into infrastructure money to pay out for the new construction.