The Flamingo Park Neighborhood's Valiant Struggle Against the Florida DOT

search the Original Green Blog


view down Alton Road looking South near intersection with Lincoln Road in South Beach


   This started out as just another shameful story of a Department of Transportation ramming their over-engineered highway through a neighborhood, but the Flamingo Park Neighborhood Association just might be turning the tables on them in South Beach. Alton Road, on the West side of Miami Beach, is the battleground.

   The Florida DOT decided to "improve" Alton Road, already the least walking- and bike-friendly thoroughfare on South Beach so that it can carry even more cars, and that they could travel faster. The design speed will be 40 miles/hour, but two of the lanes are wider than Interstate lanes, so you know how people will drive. And at 40 miles per hour, your changes of surviving if you're walking and get hit by a car are about 10%. The design speed of 30 miles per hour that the neighborhood is asking for reduces your chance of getting killed to about 50%. Which would you prefer? 

sidewalk cafe on Alton Road protected by parked cars on street

this seating would never exist without parked cars

   The DOT is removing about 40% of the on-street parking. Problem is, on-street parking is what makes sidewalk cafes possible because you'd be insane to sit right next to speeding traffic without parked cars to protect you. And every car parked on the street is worth roughly $250,000 in sales each year to the merchants on that street. Force parking off the street, and bad things happen. If it's behind the building, it's a big heat island and you have to provide not only the parking spaces, but also the aisles in between, so it takes nearly twice as much asphalt. Move it to the side of the building and things get worse because now you have gaps in the urbanism, which is ugly and boring. Move it to the front of the building for the worst possible condition because a sidewalk running between a speedy thoroughfare completely kills Walk Appeal, meaning that almost nobody will walk there.

   This isn't just theory… we now know both the measurable things and the ones that can't be measured which encourage or discourage walking. And walkability is the biggest single predictor of the chance of success and risk of failure of neighborhood businesses.

sidewalk cafe on Alton Road, South Beach tucked into recess along shop fronts

cafe seating nestles into recesses
at every opportunity to get further
from the speeding cars

   Walk Appeal is an even bigger problem than normal on Alton Road because almost half of South Beach residents don't own a car. They don't need them because South Beach is so walkable. So if you make Alton Road unfriendly to walkers and cyclists, you're cutting out almost half of the customers to Alton Road's businesses. For most businesses, losing almost half of your customers is the equivalent of a death warrant.

   The Flamingo Park Neighborhood Association, and the Alton Road Reconstruction Coalition it spawned have been fighting the DOT's auto-dominant design every step of the way, and not just as NIMBYs. Some really serious New Urbanist planners live on South Beach. Andrés Duany and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, two of the founders of the New Urbanism, have a condo there as well. The New Urbanists have therefore put out many excellent design counter-proposals along the way. The designers  include Matt Lambert, Jason King, and Pam Stacy, all partners or employees at two of the most famous planning firms in the world: DPZ and Dover-Kohl. My wife Wanda is one of the core group of neighbors leading the charge, which also includes the designers plus Aaron Sugarman, Ben Batchelder, Ken Bereski, Mark Needle, Ron Starkman, and Tammy Tibbles, under the leadership of longtime neighborhood activist Denis Russ. Others have weighed in as well, such as nationally-known cycling expert Mike Lydon and blogger Kaid Benfield on Atlantic Cities, saying "this is what a Complete Streets campaign should look like."

flooding on Alton Road, South Beach (Miami Beach)

underground drainage work to fix frequent flooding
will take a year, giving the Coalition time to see that
wrongs get righted

   But even with all of the excellent counter-proposals, the DOT did what the DOT always does: they rammed their design down the throats of the neighborhood, and in a particularly nefarious way that was downright dishonest: The DOT showed several options, and after literally years of negotiation with Flamingo Park, both sides (plus the city of Miami Beach) agreed on what is known as the "locally-approved option." But when they signed the contract to begin construction a couple months ago, it was with a design that nobody had even seen. And that design was worse than any of the options that they had shown. That's downright fraudulent and disgraceful.

   So it seemed that all was lost. But Tammy just wouldn't let it go. She did a lot of research, and then put together a very effective case that the Bait-And-Switch the DOT pulled simply isn't right, and finally got the City Commission's ear. The stakes weren't as big as all of East Village, but this story is bracingly similar to Jane Jacobs' legendary fight against Robert Moses in the 1960s.

liquor store storefront on Alton Road, South Beach (Miami Beach)

Alton Road has teetered on the edge
for as long as I've lived in Miami
Beach - if it loses any more Walk
Appeal, it may find itself entirely
given over to liquor stores,

thrift shops & auto repair garages

   Now, the design of Alton Road is back in play. Part of the job is reworking the storm drainage, so it will be 2015 before the street-level work is done. The Miami Beach City Commission is holding hearings, and appears firmly on the side of the Coalition, with one commissioner noting that "the Commission should prepare for litigation if necessary."

   So join the fight! This campaign just might set the pattern for other victories over tyrannical DOT's elsewhere. America was founded to put down tyranny, but DOTs across America act with complete impunity. The time has come for this to end. They can build highways in the country if they like because that's where highways belong, but when a state route enters town, it needs to behave in civilized fashion. For far too long, we've paid a price now totaling over a trillion dollars by letting highways ruin our cities and towns by being too big and fast. When they come into town, they should act like boulevards, avenues, and main streets, not country highways.

   We need your help… please join us! Please sign the petition. Facebook it. Tweet it. Here's the Facebook page… please like it. Please follow their new Twitter stream. Please blog about it. Please tweet the blog posts. Matter of fact, I've started an Alton Road BlogOff, so let me know when you blog and I'll put it there. Right now is the crucial time, so please act!


   ~Steve Mouzon

Walk-Appeal-cover-front-web

Subscribe to get Walk Appeal book updates

* indicates required

You'll receive an email from me with the subject line "Mouzon Design: Please Confirm Subscription." Click Yes to confirm your subscription for Walk Appeal book updates.


Legacy Comments


Steve Mouzon · Board Member at Sky Institute for the Future

The Alton Road Reconstruction Coalition always faced an uphill battle against the Florida DOT in the redesign of Alton Road in South Beach (Miami Beach), but Tammy Tibbles, a modern-day Jane Jacobs, pulled off the impossible after the DOT did a disgraceful and dishonest last-minute bait-and-switch to a much worse design that nobody had ever seen... and then immediately put the job under contract. Even though construction is ongoing, Tammy actually managed to get the street-level design back on the table! But she and the Alton Road Reconstruction Coalition need your help. Read about it here.

Can you help by talking about it somewhere? (Facebook, blog, twitter, etc.) We need precedents for how to stop bad DOT design in our day.

Jun 10, 2013 3:25pm


Tony Castaneira · Director of Sales & Marketing at RaceWatches.com

Build More roads. Widen the lanes. I have no sympathy for those who willingly lives on a major thoroughfare. You are like the jerks who move next to an airport then complain about the noise.

 Jun 10, 2013 4:39pm


Alton Road Reconstruction Coalition

Steve, thank you for shining a spotlight on our quest. We'd like to mention several people that have been instrumental in the Coalition: Michael Grieco.
David Hundley
Jeff Donnelly
Also, we have received tremendous support for Representative David Richardson and Senator Gwen Margolis. The City of Miami Beach Commission has recently joined us, after they discovered that the $11 MM they agreed to spend to move the bike lanes to West Ave (a safer place for cyclists) did not regain sidewalk space or recover lost parking spaces, nor has FDOT actually created a safer condition for cyclists.
The quest continues.
ARRC

un 13, 2013 10:03pm


822+

© Stephen A. Mouzon 2020