Construction is set to begin soon to build a new roundabout at a busy Brickell intersection. The goal is to ease traffic, but some neighbors are concerned the planned project will not go far enough to fix what they feel makes the area dangerous.
When urban planner Aaron DeMayo saw the plans for the roundabout at the intersection of SW 13th Street and Coral Way, he was concerned.
"We didn’t fully understand what was being proposed, so we reached out to the FDOT," DeMayo said. "Got some more detailed drawings and realized that we didn’t agree with a lot of the solutions they were proposing.”
DeMayo, the founder of the design firm Future Vision Studios, believes the planned roundabout doesn’t get to the root of the traffic problem and could create more problems.
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“This is a really critical one to get right to allow for Brickell to continue to densify for both people who may be living there and might want to commute out of Brickell, or for all the office buildings being built inside of Brickell for people to commute in from the neighboring neighborhoods," he said.
His plan is to have a dedicated left turn lane at SW 2nd and turn the roundabout into a peanut-shaped roundabout with one lane of traffic instead of two connecting each of the five roads that flow into the intersection.
“If we look at this comprehensively and we address that intersection by adding dedicated left turns and then having a single lane in each direction, we will create a lot more efficiency in the system and will also reduce and increase safety," he said. "It’s called a road diet and it’s a proven mechanism, and road diets are often paired with roundabout designs. So it makes perfect sense that we would look at putting these two design ideas together at the same time for this area.”
DeMayo says that currently, the road design doesn't allow enough safe traveling
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“So I’ve seen throughout the analysis a lot of vehicles would avoid the northbound 2nd Avenue to reach 13th Street, then go up 15th and make an illegal left turn onto Southwest 13th," he said. "And the proposed design doesn’t address that. I think that that’s a major flaw of this because it still allows for that illegal maneuver to occur."
But Florida's Department of Transportation says the planning for this project has been going on for years.
They sent a statement saying that there were two public meetings – one during the planning phases in 2018 and another during the design phase in 2020, and that they have been working with “…elected officials and staff from the city of Miami and Miami-Dade County. There were presentations to organizations including the Brickell Homeowner’s Association and the Roads Neighborhood Civic Association.”
FDOT says the work on the project begins next week. But DeMayo says the state should reverse course and come up with a better plan.
FDOT will be holding another public meeting Tuesday night at 6 p.m. in Miami Dade College's Padrón Campus in Little Havana.
