Florida Neighbors Stage Ribbon Cutting For New Bike Lane
Why don’t cities roll out the red carpet for new greenways — even as they host splashy ribbon-cuttings for the latest car infrastructure?
Miami Beach residents Charles Fischer and Matt Gultanoff asked themselves just that this summer, when local leaders in their home of Miami Beach staged an opening ceremony for a new parking garage. Those same leaders, though, didn’t consider active transportation infrastructure worthy of a photo-op. So the two men opted to host one themselves.
And their neighbors showed up in force. On September 17th, an unofficial ribbon-cutting event they had planned for a new bike lane attracted dozens of people and became a rallying point for safer streets.
“What started off as a little tongue-in-cheek way to poke fun at the city … turned into an actual meet-and-greet [for] neighbors who were passionately in favor of this bike lane,” Fischer said.
With only a Facebook post’s notice the day before the event, Fischer estimates that 35 to 40 neighbors showed up for their “guerrilla” event. Amongst the crowd were families and bike advocates, as well as elected leaders from Miami Beach and the neighboring town of Surfside. One group of cyclists spontaneously joined the party after riding past it from the new path.
Neighbors agree that the protected, two-way bike lane is a much-needed safety improvement, connecting homes along Jefferson Avenue to the rest of the Miami Beach. It’s widely popular, too — averaging nearly 600 daily trips, according to advocates with Better Streets Miami Beach and the Flamingo Park Neighborhood Association. One local mother, Miriam Haskell, even said that the bike lane gives her son the freedom to bike to soccer practice safely on his own.
But behind every smile at the ribbon cutting was a frustration with the city.
“We’re so focused on car and parking and car culture,” Fischer said.
The parking in question is a 300-space garage in the northern part of Miami Beach. In July, city leaders held their own ribbon cutting to celebrate the opening of the first 150 spaces to the public.
“We know how dire the need for parking is for the North Beach neighborhood, and this fills that need with 150 spots,” Mayor Steven Meiner said at the event, according to StreetsWatch, which is operated by Better Streets Miami Beach.
But the city’s own data, along with eyewitness accounts, tell a much less exciting story. One month after the splashy stunt, advocates found only three cars parked in the garage on a Friday afternoon; the following Sunday evening, there were seven.
That underwhelming usage isn’t because the area is unpopular; the garage is just a five minute walk from a major commercial corridor. But with stops on two major bus lines just one block away — and one of those lines running 24 hours a day, seven days a week, as often as every nine minutes — neighbors don’t really need to drive to reach it.
And for those who do, there are already four other lots within a one-block radius of the new garage.
Giving more space to cars simply isn’t a priority for Miami Beach neighbors, local surveys show. Year after year, Fischer says those documents have demonstrated that traffic congestion is the most-pressing issue residents face — a problem that’d be better solved by getting drivers out of their cars and onto bikes and buses.
“You can’t get off this island because there are so many cars,” he adds.
Fischer says city leaders aren’t solving any problems by making it easier to park, particularly when better mobility solutions like transit are already in full effect. Rather than celebrating what hasn’t worked — and what continues to fail — they could take a note from their own constituents.
Luckily, those constituents are making their priorities loud and clear. The advocates behind the ribbon cutting made a point to gather participants’ contact information, so they can alert them about future opportunities to show their support for people-centered infrastructure.
“A lot of people came [to our ribbon-cutting] ready to be activated and to move onto the next one,” Fischer said. “We met a lot of [neighbors] that I didn’t know at all … that felt so passionately about this that they showed up.
“Not only did they want to celebrate this, but they wanted to see what’s next — and they wanted to help make what’s next happen,” he continued.
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