Miami News Blog

​Using your own two feet as your primary means of conveyance in Florida won't just get you drenched in sweat most of the year, it's also more likely to put you in the path of danger.

According to Transportation for America's Pedestrian Danger Index, the top four most dangerous metropolitans in America for pedestrians are all in Florida.

Miami/Ft. Lauderdale/Pompano Beach comes in third, behind number one Orlando and number two Tampa Bay. Jacksonville rounds out the top 4.

The reports says that, "that the most dangerous places to walk are those that fail to make smart infrastructure investments that make roads safer for everyone."

In 2007 and 2008, 22.5% of all traffic deaths in South Florida were pedestrians, the fourth most in the nation.

Kyle Munzenrieder

An empty and slightly damp Biscayne Boulevard.

​A rare sight at the intersection of Biscayne Boulevard and NE 35th Street today: no traffic.

That's because southbound Biscayne is blocked off between NE 33rd and 36th streets following a water main break caused during reconstruction along the road.

​Remember that movie Falling Down, where Michael Douglas goes on a violent rampage against the everyday nuisances and obstacles of urban life? If you believe a police account, Miami-Dade Public Schools elementary substitute Rolanda Benjamin is Miami's real-life William Foster -- although, thankfully, instead of an arsenal, teach was armed only with a bottle of water.

Just after 11 a.m. September 22, Miami Parking Authority enforcement officer Sham Jaglal was overseeing the towing of Benjamin's Chevy Impala, which was parked in the courthouse district at 1300 NW 14th Ave. She owed a whopping $706.60 for unpaid parking citations. But Benjamin's car had a special disabling security system that made it impossible to tow without the keys, she later explained, so Jaglal struggled to load it onto a truck.

That's when 26-year-old Carol City native Benjamin came out of a nearby courthouse -- where she had been taking care of her tickets, she says -- to find the enforcement officer trying to impound her car. According to a police report, the substitute teacher became irate. Grabbing a water bottle from her car, she "first squeezed/splashed water on the victim's face and uniform shirt," the report reads, and then "pushed [Jaglal] in the chest area in an attempt to move his city-issued vehicle from its parked position to enable her to move her vehicle and leave the location."

via flickr cc

​Suha Monem makes a mean falafel sandwich. As the head chef at Oriental Bakery & Grocery -- and the owners' daughter -- she has spent most of her life surrounded by pita, lamb, and tahini. After one Yelper tried her grub at the Coral Way shop a couple of years ago, he proclaimed, "They bake their own bread DAILY, so stop buying dehydrated pita bread at Publix and come get your bread here!" And last year, New Times' "Best of Miami" gave the place a nod for best falafel.

Family Guy screen cap

Why are we taxpayers wasting $330 million to build Lexus lanes on I-95 north from downtown Miami? They are supposed to reduce congestion, but all they have accomplished so far is create confusion and traffic back-ups -- sometimes even more in the express lanes than the regular ones.

The state tells us it is going to guarantee cars can go 50 miles per hour in these lanes. It will encourage hybrids and carpooling. It all sounds so wonderful.

When the things were approved -- and they should be finished in 2011 -- the state's secretary of transportation, Stephanie C. Kopelousos, said this: "The 95 Express project will help boost the economy and improve the quality of life of all South Floridians by managing congestion."

Baloney. Yesterday afternoon, as on several other occasions when I have headed this way, the express lane was backed up to hell while regular ones were moving better. Overall, it has worsened the commute north.

Department of Transportation 95 Express project leader Debora Rivera points out that about 300,000 cars a day travel the highway. Some break down or crash into one another. "We do believe that when tolling begin, these lanes will function as they are supposed to. But crashes and disabled vehicles are a fact of life."

Your tax dollars at work! Hey, why not give these guys $700 billion to bail out a buncha rich bankers. We know it'll be spent wisely.

Chuck Strouse

I’m ashamed to tell you this Mr. Construction Worker with an East Coast accent and sandy hair but, I usually cross the street when I see a group of hard hats clustered. I won’t again.

You were near last week when, after 25 minutes of circling for a parking spot, I was delighted to see two young girls heading to their car at the Miami Beach lot along Collins Avenue around 21st Street.

I regret that you couldn’t stop the black, luxury car with three, vocal young lads from coming behind my Honda or detain the one who emerged in a Jordan jersey displaying a colorful assortment of body art.

I greatly appreciate that you did hear him not so nicely inform me through my open car window: “I’ll come after you bitch if you take that spot. I’ll beat you.”

Thankfully sir, you stepped in and said, “Don’t talk to her like that.” And, even after glancing at my engagement ring that perhaps led you to the conclusion that you had no chance in my pants, you still moved your truck to free a spot. I will never look at hard hats the same.

Sincerely,
--Janine Zeitlin

P.S. I miss you already. Tuesday when 395 was closed, a muscle head in a pink polo on South Beach backed his car into a man and flipped his body a few feet into the air. The driver didn’t even apologize to the man he splattered on the pavement. I paused to see if the man needed help and a gentleman behind me started honking and yelled, “Nothing you can do about it.”

What gets 70 miles to the gallon, cruises along at 50 mph and runs on three wheels? The RTM Tango, a little egg-shaped scooter-car. The company, RTM Group Inc. is based in Miami and builds the three-wheelers in Uruguay. Although the vehicle cannot travel on the interstate, it does sport a windshield, a roof, a dashboard, a trunk and reverse gears. Scooter dealers in Florida received their first shipments of Tangos last month. The car comes in bright, primary colors.
Cost: about $7,000 Cost for a 2.6-gallon fill up: $8. Karma: priceless.
- Tamara Lush

For the second year in a row a survey has determined Miami has the rudest drivers in the country? No. This is blasphemy. We demand a recount. --Emily Witt

On April Fool's Day, Beach Towing Service punked Karl Willman. The unemployed college student pulled into the parking lot of the CVS Pharmacy at 1421 Alton Road around 7:45 p.m. He parked his 2005 gray Honda Element, got out and walked next door to Lime Fresh Mexican Grill to grab a bite to eat. Willman finished his meal and went inside the CVS where he purchased milk.

By then, about an hour had elapsed since Willman's arrival. When he stepped onto the parking lot he realized his car had vanished. He immidietely noticed Beach Towing trucks hauling out two more cars. "When I called Beach Towing, they said I had to pay $185 to get my car back," Willman fumed.

Beach Towing is one of only two truck operators that are allowed to hitch vehicles in the City of Miami Beach, which collects a service fee from each automobile Beach Towing and Tremont Towing hauls away. Beach Towing charged Willman $150 for a hook-up charge, another $30 for a weekend fee, and $5 for five miles of towing, even though the car was transported four-tenths of a mile to Beach Towing's lot on Dade Boulevard, Willman claims. He was forced to pay in cash, he added.

Nobody gives Calvin T. Godfrey a parking in a restricted zone ticket on Jesus's Birthday. Nodody.

I pledged to fight this affront to goodwill. It only took three months to get my day in court, but at 1:08 p.m. yesterday afternoon, I came armed only with a bible. Officer Samaria Robinson, of the Miami Beach police department, had slapped me, unceremoniously, with a fat ticket without so much as a happy holidays. And I've been spoiling to defend myself all winter.

For decades, Biscayne Boulevard was a regal stretch of road, a tropical gateway to paradise. Visitors were greeted with smooth asphalt, clean family-friendly motels and towering palm trees. Today, of course, it's mostly commuters that flow into Miami via Biscayne, and they are assaulted daily by never ending views of annoying construction, hourly motels and hookers. The royal palm trees are the only attractive thing about Biscayne these days.

But even they may disappear. The Florida Department of Transportation has already uprooted 130 palm trees on Biscayne because of the construction. They are supposed to be replaced with Oak trees, which will provide shade, according to state plans.

But a group of Miami residents is fighting the change. On Monday night — a dark and stormy one, no less -- five people held signs on the corner of Biscayne and 68th St., in protest of chopping down any more trees. They especially want to save the hundreds of trees still standing south of 36th Street.

"I'm here to support Biscayne Boulevard and her palms," said Sean-Paul Melito, who was holding a sign that said "A Royal Shame." He has already lobbied lawmakers to designate the road as a Scenic Transportation Corridor.

My life is informed by film, and when I am having a particularly terrible terrible awful experience, I often suspend the trauma by framing it through someone else's celluloid suffering, conjuring an imaginary foil the way Jimi Mistry invented Kyle MacLachlan as Cary Grant in A Touch of Pink. On Thursday, simultaneously recoiling from and managing scenarios involving a critically ill, bloody, elderly dog, and the equally mystifying and horrifying traffic on the Palmetto Expressway, I let myself think of Shirley McLaine in (viewed now, the obviously overrated) Terms of Endearment and Amy Madigan in Robert Benton's retrospectively underappreciated Places in the Heart.

My Italian Greyhound Astra, who will be fifteen years old on Halloween, enjoys good senior health. Aside from being blind, deaf, incontinent, and possessing a holler that seems to be coming not from a ten-pound dog but from an amplified rooster, she enjoys spending her golden (extra emphasis on golden) years urinating on every imaginable surface and consuming vats of corn chowder and coconut almond gelato. But a real emergency threatened this past week: Osteo erosion had created a hole in Astra's palate, by her large canine incisor, that was allowing ... stuff ... to pass between her mouth, nose, and brain. So she needed a bone graft, stat.

Of course, here in MDC, where it is possible to procure a Birkin bag or an audience with Shaq at the snap of a substantial wallet, specialized veterinary care should be easy to come by. Except it's not. You need only look at public animal shelters overflowing with sad-eyed, curly-tailed feral dogs, or on Lincoln Road where terrified, overheated Yorkies and TCPs are dragged panting as living fashion accessories, to determine animal health and welfare is not a prominent cultural value here.

The only -- the only -- vet in South Florida who performs geriatric oral surgery is Jan Bellows, whose office is in Weston, nearly three counties away. "Dentistry is an underserved area of specialization," Bellows told me. "I do have people come to see me from all over the state, but most are from Miami."

Your car is not a phone booth. Your car is not your office. As much as you would like to think you can multitask, the reality is you can't. That is why the "gods" (Jobs & Gates) created computers... to fill the gap in the human inability to do two things at once. Now that this has been clarified for you, put down that cell phone and drive!

Some observations from the commute:

Apparently the accepted "buffer zone" from a person talking on a cell in one car to the next car in front of them is 4 car lengths. Now picture every twentieth car doing this... imagine how many more cars could get somewhere faster if this rule was not in effect. If you happen to be in front of me while you are applying the "4 car length rule," you should at the very least have to be talking to me on that phone. If you are going to waste my time, you should have to entertain me, or at least order me a pizza.

Drivers "lean into," or tend to slide into, the lane that is on the same side as the phone up against their ears. Either that, or the walls of I-95 are magnetized. I'm getting my cell phone number detailed onto both sides of my car so that if you really need to be in my lane, you could at least put that phone to good use and call me to let me know. It should also be accepted common courtesy for the rest of us to help (bump) you in the direction you want to go. Trust me, I'd be more than happy to oblige.

While I know this is all wishful thinking on my part, I think we should all agree on one new rule of the road. If you must talk on your cellular device while you are driving, you have to do it while balancing a large, scalding-hot cup of coffee in your lap (preferably a Starbucks venti). You see I'll feel a lot better after you slam into my car, knowing that you'll have a less-than fifty percent chance of creating any future imbeciles from those scorched loins. It's the least you can do for your fellow man. Let's face it, since we are now 300 million strong and growing, we should at least start becoming selective... natural selection, that is.-Michael Shavalier

From the in case you didn't notice files, readers and drivers, rejoice! This year is the 50th anniversary of the Eisenhower Interstate Highway System. A special site called "Florida's Interstates - A Half Century of Progress" wants to "Welcome [you] to the party! There's a nationwide celebration going on in 2006.

It has been 50 years since the Interstate Highway System officially began with the passage of the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956. The Interstate System helps Florida provide many of the most livable communities in the nation for residents and visitors alike, while preserving the state's diverse environment.

Really? OK. I'm prepared to roll with that. But what about this?

I suggest you start off by viewing the video, Roads Well Traveled: 50 Years of Florida's Interstate System, or by reading Gerald Ensley's article, "When you think about it, interstate highways are pretty cool".

I view the video every day through a device I like to call my windshield. I'd prefer not to think about it.

America's would-be autobahn was the product of a February 1, 1939 directive to the Chief of the Bureau of Public Roads "to investigate and make a report of his findings and recommend to the Congress ... with respect to the feasibility of funding, and cost of, superhighways not exceeding three in number, running in a general direction from the eastern to the western portion of the United States, and not exceeding three in number, running in a general direction from the northern to the southern portion of the United States, including the feasibility of a toll system on such roads."

The Bureau emphasized the need for action:

When one observes the countless impediments that embarrass the movement of twentieth-century traffic through the eighteenth century streets of some eastern cities one wonders how long it will be, with the assured further increase in traffic, before complete congestion will result.

Didn't we reach that point about 20 years ago, give or take? About 30 years or less after our "superhighways, not exceeding [six] in number," opened for business?

In a stroke of unfortunate coincidence and having strictly nothing to do with this dubious celebration, Riptide is hard at work compiling New Times' upcoming Road Warriors' Guide to South Florida. Add your observations, anecdotes, advice, gripes and the like here at I-95 Sucks! and the best comments will be published with the guide in December.-Frank Houston

Critical Miami recently called "BULLSHIT" on this article (registration required) by Larry Lebowitz about pothole maintenance on I-95. In a post called What's up with the holes in I-95?, Critical Miami argues that they are man-made, not accidents in need of fixing.

[The article] talks all about the difference between the road surface of '95 between BPB and Dade, and the pothole repair strategies of FDOT subcontractors. Fine, sofar as it goes. But color me stark raving mad, they're putting those holes in, not removing them. Why? I don't know. Maybe they're installing sensors of some sort. But check the holes: they're at suspiciously regular intervals. Some of them are are perfect-rectangle-shaped. And check my photo sequence, shot of a crew working on I-95 late one night: the approach, they're doing something with a big fat hole, two big holes, and as above, a picture of some dudes very clearly jackhammering the highway (the latter is digitally brightened, which is why it looks different). Explain that!

Riptide doesn't know a pothole repair strategy from a hole in the ground, but could these be sensors for the metered stop ramps that are coming to a stretch of I-95 in north Miami next year? Maybe, says Jesus Martinez, an administrator who is part of a DOT team implementing the system. As of today, he says, the in-road sensors are all in place, so if Critical Miami spies any more suspicious jackhammering, it might be time to call Homeland Security.-Frank Houston

Muzzled beneath black tarp-like shrouds, traffic lights stand at the ready at 22 on-ramps along the I-95 corridor, from NW 62nd Street north to Ives Dairy Road.

Miami's ''Metered Stop Ramps" were scheduled to go online in 2005; now mid- to late-2007 is the time when motorists aiming to ascend the artery can expect to see red instead.

These metered ramps are more trypical of California highways. But consider a recent Reason Foundation report called the Mobility Project, which says that by 2030, drivers in 11 other major cities — including Miami -- will be stuck in daily traffic jams worse than what Los Angeles' brave drivers bear today. (Atlanta, Baltimore, Chicago, Denver, Las Vegas, Minneapolis/St. Paul, Portland, San Francisco-Oakland, Seattle-Tacoma, and Washington, D.C. are the other cities. Seattle and Minneapolis are two of this biggest users of metered on-ramps.) So maybe these new traffic lights make sense. Sorta.

95 is becoming the 5. Or the 101. Or the 1. Whatever.

According to Jesus Martinez at the SunGuide Traffic Management Center, the lights -- the first in the state, aside from one stray light somewhere in the Tampa Bay area -- will be deployed only when needed, meaning a.m. and p.m. rush hours, special events, and when there are accidents. The benefit, he says, is in reducing what is typically a "platoon of cars" entering the highway all at once, which creates "turbulence."

"Drivers here in South Florida are so friendly, they don't allow other drivers to merge," he says with a twinge of sarcasm.

Metering will allow one or two cars onto I-95 at a time. Some ramps are too short, and will be programmed to always allow two vehicles at a time. The magic number, Martinez says, is to allow 900 cars onto the roadway every hour. The metering system, he says, allows "maximum volume, more reliable trip times, and better fuel efficiency." In some parts of the country it's been shown to reduce accidents by as much as 60 percent.

Oh sure: Safety, fuel economy ... what's not to like? But if things actually get friendly, we might feel lost.-Frank Houston

If I keep this up, in a year I will have spent one whole month of my life on I-95.

I commute about 120 miles a day to Miami New Times from my home in southern Palm Beach County. I know: It's a misery many of you share. That's the reason this section of Riptide exists: To give you, my co-commuters, a venue for venting, telling stories, asking questions, and all around commiserating.

In the next 12 months, I'd spend a total of 32.5, 24-hour days on the interstate. And what will I have learned?

That there will never be enough lanes. Never.

That if you speed, eventually, they will get you. (They got me for $208.)

That if you drive in the HOV lane at the wrong time of day, they will get you. (They got me for $133.50.)

That there is a small crest south of NW 103 Street beyond which, heading north, you will always encounter a static red sea of brake lights.

That the Golden Glades is murder on satellite radio reception.

Most of all, that this ribbon of slow-moving multicolored metal is, for better or worse (OK: worse), one of those places where life is lived. Bring a good book (on CD), be alone with your thoughts, fasten your seat belt, and take a deep breath. Avoid the cell phone and check your blind spots. There's simply no way around this gauntlet. Drive safe!

Got a commute from hell? A piece of driving etiquette to share? A road rage incident to talk yourself down from? Start posting! Because even as we jockey for position and give each other the finger, we can agree on one thing: I-95 sucks. -Frank Houston