{"id":92387,"date":"2025-12-22T12:49:12","date_gmt":"2025-12-22T12:49:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/92387\/"},"modified":"2025-12-22T12:49:12","modified_gmt":"2025-12-22T12:49:12","slug":"to-open-mental-health-center-county-unit-says-show-me-the-money","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/92387\/","title":{"rendered":"To open mental health center, county unit says \u2018Show me the money\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"www.miamitodaynews.com\"\/<\/a><\/p>\n

Advertisement\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

Written by Miami Today<\/a> on December 22, 2025<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\"To<\/p>\n

As expansion of rapid transit in Miami-Dade County has become an approved policy with a diminished hope, county commissioners voted unanimously last week to seek a report on where the money to actually add rapid transit corridors could come from.<\/p>\n

The commission gave Mayor Daniella Levine Cava 90 days to report \u201cdetailing possible funding mechanisms\u201d for what was branded the Smart Plan to add six rapid transit corridors along with a network of express bus rapid transit routes.<\/p>\n

The plan became the county\u2019s policy in 2016, the resolution pointed out, but to date the October opening of the 20-mile-long Metro Express bus rapid transit corridor from Dadeland to Homestead using an upgraded version of the former busway roadbed has been the only completed corridor.<\/p>\n

The next corridor on the drawing boards was the Northeast Corridor, a rail line from downtown Miami to Aventura that would eventually be extended into Broward and Palm Beach counties. That service was planned for operation by 2032, the next transit line out of the gate, because the railway tracks are already in place on a route that does not have to be acquired by the county.<\/p>\n

But that plan hit a roadblock in Tallahassee this year as $200 million from the state that had already been approved and was pivotal to the plan was yanked out with no guarantee that it would ever be restored.<\/p>\n

Other rapid transit corridors in the plan are even further away on the timeline. They in\u00adclude a North Corridor to the Broward County line, an East-West Corridor that would serve the main Florida International University cam\u00adpus, a Baylink in the form of a Metromover extension from downtown Miami to Miami Beach, and a Kendall Corridor that would run up Kendall Drive.<\/p>\n

Other than the now-stalled Northeast Cor\u00adridor, none of the other parts of the Smart Plan have had either funding mechanisms or detailed costs attached to them.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is an urgent need to construct the re\u00admaining Smart Plan corridors and enhance the mobility of Miami-Dade County residents,\u201d said the resolution by Commissioner Oliver Gilbert III that passed last week.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think this item is long overdue,\u201d said Commissioner Roberto Gonzalez, who requested that the administration look spe\u00adcifically at the Kendall Corridor Smart Plan improvements.<\/p>\n

Work on that corridor, the farthest behind of all the transit legs, was linked by Com\u00admissioner Raquel Regalado to another long-delayed project, which is the synchronization of all county traffic signals to make traffic flow as smoothly and quickly as possible.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe should get an update on the synchro\u00adnization of the lights,\u201d Ms. Regalado told commissioners. \u201cKendall Drive in my district is an area that is a parking lot, and it is part of the Smart Program. I did not move for\u00adward with it [under the Smart Plan] because it would involve closing a lane and making what is already a super-congested area more congested. And I\u2019m waiting for the synchro\u00adnization of the lights.\u201d<\/p>\n

Of concern to her, she said, is that the com\u00adpletion of the Smart Plan has been separated from the synchronization of traffic signals when they are really part of the same problem.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs we\u2019re seeing with the busway [from Dadeland to Homestead], there is a direct correlation between the transit and the sig\u00adnalization. Those two things keep running into each other.\u201d<\/p>\n

With Mr. Gilbert\u2019s approval, a report on the signalization issue was added to the 90-day request to the mayor for full details.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Advertisement Written by Miami Today on December 22, 2025 As expansion of rapid transit in Miami-Dade County has…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":92388,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[225,227,226],"class_list":{"0":"post-92387","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-hialeah","8":"tag-hialeah","9":"tag-hialeah-headlines","10":"tag-hialeah-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92387","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=92387"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92387\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/92388"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=92387"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=92387"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=92387"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}