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Written by Miami Today on November 5, 2025
Key elements of an east-west leg in Miami’s Smart Program at add rapid transit narrowly escaped the ax last week when the Transportation Planning Organization deadlocked on a measure to erase them from its plans.
At the state’s request, the organization was voting to delete from the next five years’ work plan a Flagler Street bus rapid transit corridor from Florida’s Turnpike to Biscayne Boulevard as well as a critical Flagler Street bus traffic demonstration project. The state had been evaluating the east-west Flagler corridor since 2016.
Documents given to the planning organization said the Florida Department of Transportation had determined that continuing with the projects was no longer viable.
The Flagler Corridor project from Tamiami Station and Dolphin Station to downtown Miami was estimated to cost $16.4 million; the demonstration project was to cost $7.5 million.
Members of the Transportation Planning Organization didn’t discuss the issue, but after county Commissioner Eileen Higgins said she was voting against the public hearing item, six others followed her and the proposed deletion of the projects from plans died in a 7-7 vote.
East-west transit has been one of six new corridors that were part of the 2016 Smart Plan (now called Smart Program) to add rapid transportation countywide. The South Corridor bus rapid transit that began running in late October was the first of those six to come to fruition.
The agenda item given to planning organization members by Executive Director Aileen Bouclé stated as a reason for removing the two Flagler projects from plans that “detailed analyses revealed that the existing corridor infrastructure cannot support Business Access Transit lanes without incurring costly mitigation measures.”
An initial Flagler bus rapid transit study by the Florida Department of Transportation had led to the recommendation of curbside Business Access Transit lanes. In 2020 the Transportation Planning Organization asked the state to analyze reversible lanes along Flagler, but the state said it concluded that reversible lanes wouldn’t work there.
Then in 2022 the Transportation Planning Organization asked the state to put the Flagler bus rapid transit study on hold and develop the Flagler Demonstration Project to evaluate Business Access Transit lanes “in a real-world setting” along a 2.1-milestretch of Flagler, the planning organization was reminded last week.
But in February of this year the Florida Department of Transportation published new guidelines that would have required vast infrastructure changes to use Business Access Transit lanes. At the same time, a memo from the department told the planning organization, a study showed that evening rush hour travel along the 2.1-mile Flagler Street study corridor increasing from a former 9 minutes to 30 minutes, and area roadways couldn’t absorb the diverted traffic.
Meanwhile, another feasibility study that began in March for the corridor is looking at an elevated Metromover or passenger rail to provide the east-west transit, based on the January 2024 request from the Transportation Planning Organization. That study is to be completed by December 2026.
That study “will explore new alignments, analyze projected transit demand, and identify connections between key destinations to ensure any future premium transit investment is cost effective and feasible,” the state transportation department wrote.