Light rail to Miami Beach may cost $532 million
BY ALFONSO CHARDY
ACHARDY@ELNUEVOHERALD.COM
A passenger light-rail system from Government Center in downtown Miami to the Convention Center in Miami Beach via the MacArthur Causeway would cost about $532 million to build and some $22 million a year to operate and maintain, project planners told the mayors of Miami-Dade County, Miami and Miami beach during a meeting at County Hall Wednesday.
Mayors Carlos Gimenez of Miami-Dade, Tomás Regalado of Miami and Philip Levine of Miami Beach enthusiastically embraced the project and formed a partnership to pursue funding for the first major step in advancing the endeavor.
Though the project is still in a very early stage, the mayors’ agreement to seek funding as partners signaled that three key municipalities in the county are serious about taking the enterprise to the design and construction phase sometime in the future. There is no target date for construction at this time because funding for the project has not been secured.
Wednesday’s meeting was the second in which transportation managers brief local government leaders about the project. During the first meeting in January project managers unveiled potential route options. At the time Gimenez and Regalado expressed support for the tracks going over the MacArthur Causeway. Levine did not attend the first meeting, but on Wednesday he seemed to back the project regardless of what final alignment is picked.
The highlight of the meeting was the agreement among the mayors to form a partnership to find the $3 million they need to finance a project development study that when completed it could advance the plan to design and construction. Under the plan, the $3 million would include $250,000 each from Miami-Dade, Miami and Miami Beach, along with $750,000 from the Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT) and $1.5 million from the U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT).
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About time this project moves forward since it was first proposed in 2002 and will be a vital link connecting to Metrorail in downtown Miami and the new All Aboard Florida train station into a transit hub that will have 4 different types of rail once completed.