Written by Michael Lewis on March 4, 2026
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The good news is that after decades of taxing ourselves for transit and a decade of planning, Miami-Dade residents are finally aboard the first of six systems that are meant to become a countywide rapid transit network.
The bad news is that while the Metro Express buses that roll the 20 miles from South Dade to Dadeland trim commuting time for riders, they jam roadways painfully for thousands who drive nearby.
Metro Express is a success just because it’s running. We added a commuting option. It’s far from what we were promised in 2018 when county Mayor Carlos Giménez chose buses over rail service on the area’s old busway, but it’s better than what we used to have. Think half a loaf – or maybe a third of a loaf.
The original promise was express buses all day every day with no stops at intersections for 20 miles as electronic gates kept the roadway clear. Instead, two years later than promised we got bus priority just 15 hours a week northbound and 15 hours southbound, with a vow that the county would look for ways to extend those true express hours.
We have received not revolutionary service that this nation had never before seen but an evolutionary service, with the pledge of improvements over time.
County commissioners heard about the evolution last month as transit chief Stacy Miller said her department is tweaking things bit by bit, intersection by intersection, to improve the flow of both the new Metro Express and the auto traffic that has been jammed at crossings along the way. As Commissioner Kionne McGhee assessed that flow in a Miami Today report last week, “What we’ve seen is one of the most inconvenient results I’ve ever seen.”
The county didn’t allow full-time rapid transit on the line, seeking to avoid things like Mr. McGhee’s prior seven-minute drive to the turnpike stalling into the current 22-minute crawl as Metro Express buses cause backups. The state, which rules US 1 traffic, refused to prioritize the buses over cars all day long. Now the county must keep tweaking to speed buses and cars simultaneously, if possible.
This is far from the ideal. As current Mayor Daniella Levine Cava noted, she and thousands of others had wanted elevated rail along the route, not at-grade buses that face cross traffic along the way. But elevated rail would cost many times the amount of the $368 million Metro Express operation and would have needed 30,000 paid trips a day to get federal funding.
Look at the math: after starting trips in late October, Metro Express averages 5,400 rides a day. If the buses could carry five times as many people and somehow were filled, we’d be short of the minimum number to even consider conversion to rail. Forget the Rolls Royce, which is rail. Let’s just hope to get the Ford-quality bus transit that we received to work as well as possible.
Metro Express is quicker than driving 20 miles on Dixie Highway. It has added bus passengers – about half of current riders shifted from old slower buses and about half actually left cars to board buses. That’s about 2,700 former car trips each way, or about 1,350 car users – drivers and passengers combined – who now take buses, meaning the bus system has taken 1,000 or so cars a day off a 20-mile strip of Dixie Highway.
That’s not a touchdown. Maybe it’s a three-yard run.
But Metro Express is all the rapid transit we’re likely to add for a decade or more. Next among planned transit was due to be trains from downtown Miami to Aventura and eventually north to Palm Beach near the coast. That was to open in 2032, but the state yanked $200 million last year and has no funding on tap this year, perhaps derailing that planned rail line.
Given that no other new transit is headed our way, the county must redouble efforts to perfect Metro Express. The fact that it’s really carrying people makes it a success, though far from the revolutionary national model for rapid transit that we anticipated. Please keep tweaking.