Why is South Florida road infrastructure so poorly designed?

[Ft Laud Guy]

Then there's the I-95 express lanes which have aided in turning the portions of that highway from Miami-Dade to central Broward with them into a parking lot whenever the sun is up, sometimes even on weekends days...And my understanding is that they're preparing to extend them further north to either SW 10th St/the Sawgrass Expressway exit or up into Palm Beach County. It just keeps getting worse and worse.

[Whereitwent]

This morning's commute to Miami was a real doozer. There were entire swaths of i95 S/B completely flooded—not being jovial, I was constantly driving through "ponds" and "lakes" of rainwater...When I got to the GGI, the rain was so thick that I literally couldn't see anything beyond the nose of my sports car...Thankfully, I made it safely...

[Marc Middleton]

Originally Posted by Whereitwent

This morning's commute to Miami was a real doozer. There were entire swaths of i95 S/B completely flooded—not being jovial, I was constantly driving through "ponds" and "lakes" of rainwater...When I got to the GGI, the rain was so thick that I literally couldn't see anything beyond the nose of my sports car...Thankfully, I made it safely...

I left my community on 151st and it was completely flood from the rain over night.

The flooding is atrocious here for such weak storms. Thankfully the Eastern parts don't get the torrential downpours that the center of the state gets or we'd be in a 'state of emergency'.

[SoFlaLEO]

I love these posts chastising us for not wanting to deal with "Public Transportation." The first time I pull a guy on flakka out of his own vehicle and not the city bus is when I'll stop saying Public Transpo is for the "riff raff."

[roadtrip75]

The reason roads are underdeveloped is simple: Activists began a nationwide movement campaigning against road-building. The government was anticipating growth and preparing for it up until the movement stopped them in the 1970s. The same activists did not campaign against the immigration which created Miami's population growth, so now here we are.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highwa...States#Florida

[StarryKnight1]

Another reason not well explored in this thread was that the road and aviation infrastructure here was not designed for the population influx that occurred. Remember that prior to the 20th century, South Florida was little more than colonial backwater. Now that the highways and airports are surrounded by unmovable development, there’s very little that can be done to expand them.

[bale002]

The OP was five years ago.

In any case, up to 15 years ago I had driven in cities around the country and around the world, and I came to the opposite conclusion: Miami is not pleasant in terms of road infrastructure and traffic, but most other densely populated cities/counties are worse.

Moreover the highways, at least, have improved a lot over the past five years and more improvements are ongoing.

True, street traffic is still horrendous.

As mentioned, the rate of population growth has outpaced the rate of infrastructure improvement, and in many cases at the level of street traffic there is not much that can be done, at current technology, short of knocking down 50-year-old houses and shopping centers.

Highly unlikely.

We'll have to wait for better signal management, at least, and, better, driverless cars, drones, and maybe even one day flying cars like in the Jetsons of yesteryear.

Or the Yogi Berra solution: nobody goes there anymore, it's too crowded.

Good Luck!

[City Guy997S]

Originally Posted by MrKnight

I have lived in various cities throughout the country including other Florida cities and never have I seen as bad of a road network as South Florida, to be frank, the road infrastructure is HORRENDOUS down here, most roads are severely undersized for the volume of traffic that they handle, major intersections with no turn lanes, no traffic signals are synchronized causing unnecessary stop and go traffic, drawbridge signals are not synchronized with surrounding traffic signals resulting in more traffic, etc... Why is this? Why is something as simple as synchronizing traffic lights not happening anywhere? What is the local government doing about it? Looking forward to some insight from more tenured South Floridians..

I95 northbound is wide open................try it!

Drawbridges are either on demand (by boat traffic) or on a time schedule like opening on the 1/4 hour.

[Roger Lessman]

Mass transit is the solution and it's time we came to grips with that reality. A (figuratively and, sadly, increasingly literally) friction-free trip by automobile is becoming a more unrealistic expectation as South FL continues to develop. That same is true in all of the major metros in the state. Barring that, autonomous cars that move in concert could work, I guess.