metrorail

[miamicanes]

It's late, so I'll have to look up the references tomorrow, but basically the only places in Miami where groundwater is a serious problem are Coconut Grove, the Tamiami Canal area, and extreme South Dade. Some of the REALLY old buildings in the art deco district even have basements, as do many of the first homes built in Wynwood and the Design District.

The REAL reason why homes in Miami generally don't have basements has nothing to do with groundwater, and everything to do with economics. "Up north", you need to dig a hole when building a house so the foundation will sit below the frozen ground in the winter. Thus, whether you want a basement or not, you need to dig a 4-6 foot deep hole... so the marginal cost of a mostly-dry basement useful for storing junk is fairly low (though the cost goes up if you want it to be really dry and usable as primary living space). In Florida, there's no need to dig for the foundation, so you'd have to eat 100% of the excavation cost. Building below ground is more expensive than building up, so unless there's a height limit you're dealing with, it's "always" cheaper to build a two story house than a one-story house with basement. As far as groundwater goes, that's a problem just about everywhere that's not a desert, including Michigan, Ohio, New York, Washington, Virginia, and elsewhere.

Now, there is one exception... residential buildings in FEMA "A" and "V" flood zones aren't allowed to have ANY living space below floodplain, and if such space exists, then the building gets remodeled more than 50%, it has to be sealed off and abandoned. That's why Mirador has a huge underground parking garage they never use. The developer triggered the 50% rule when remodeling and was forced to "officially" (though I've seen the valets sneak cars in anyway) declare them to be "off-limits" and build the new garages across the street. A lot of old buildings in South Beach triggered that requirement too, but since they're mostly owned by individuals instead of large corporations with paranoid risk-averse lawyers calling the shots, their owners can get away with using the basements for storing their own junk.

The main reason why everyone thinks groundwater is a huge problem in Miami has to do with Coconut Grove. It was the first part of Miami to become dense and expensive enough to merit underground garages, but was unfortunately the worst part of Miami to actually try building them in. There's actually one condo next to Mayfair that abandoned half of their garage's lowest level and intentionally cut a hole in the floor to allow water to enter and flood the lowest part before pumping it out to prevent the pressure from stressing out and cracking the whole building.

In any case, the "wettest" part of South Beach is South Pointe... but at that point, the subway would still be about a hundred feet below the surface and the station would have to be mined out anyway. Drilling and tunneling through wet rock is no big deal... most of the tunnels in New York and under the Thames were built through far worse conditions. The central portions of the island are quite dry and stable, and the biggest problems THERE would be keeping storm surge from running down the stairs into the stations and flooding them if the island itself ended up under a few inches of storm surge. I suspect they'd actually build the portals so you had to go UP 2 or 3 feet before going down into the stations. Also, they'd need to have forced-air ventilation with shafts rising high enough above ground to keep storm surge out.

The biggest problem MDTA would have building a subway is precisely countering public perception, both at home and in Congress, that "you can't build underground in Miami". The truth is, you (usually) can. Lower Manhattan is literally a soggy swamp, far worse than ANYWHERE in Miami... yet they managed to build an ungodly huge concrete-lined cavern below the World Trade Center. Compared to what it took to build "the bathtub", digging out stations and cut & cover tunnels below Pennsylvania Avenue is easy by comparison.

[kevinkagy]

Saying that the East/West corridor and the North/South corridor do get built, will they name those two lines with a seperate color or letter/number? I was thinking that they should keep the current line green, since all the signs are already in green and have the other two some other color like orange and blue. I'll just keep dreaming lol.

[miamicanes]

My picks:

Dadeland to Palmetto (current route) -- Green

Dadeland to MIC -- Orange

FIU to Dolphin Stadium via MIC -- Blue

FIU to Downtown via MIC -- Yellow

The Orange and Green lines hit UM... Orange and Green are UM's colors.

The Blue and Yellow lines hit FIU... Blue and Yellow are FIU's colors.

Not 100% sure if it'll work, though... I vaguely remember reading somewhere that due to angle and turning issues the FIU line will initially have to end at MIC and will only be continuous once it gets extended east all the way to downtown and the port past the orange bowl, and anyone going from FIU to anywhere past MIC will have to change trains at MIC until then.


Alternate Scheme, particularly if the Orange Bowl gets demolished for the baseball stadium and UM has to play at Dolphin Stadium (which I vehemently oppose, since I happen to like having the OB as UM's de-facto own stadium):

Green line: Dadeland to MIC

Orange line: Dadeland to Dolphin Stadium

Blue line: FIU to MIC (ideally, continuing to downtown via earlington heights if it's not impossible due to alignment, eventually Blue would be the portion between MIC and Downtown/Port/South Beach(!!!) via the Orange Bowl)

Red line: Hialeah/Palmetto to MIC, then MIC to downtown via Earlington Heights. Probably a slightly dark, garnet-ish red to make FSU grads happy (UF grads get the blue and orange lines by default, and they'll probably be a yellow line from FIU one way or another someday to satisfy FSU's craving for gold).

Personally, I'd put yellow low on the list as a color, just because it doesn't print well on maps and ends up being hard to read under bad lights. I shudder to think of the disaster and grief we'd have with non-English-speaking tourists if they tried to have a blue line AND a turquoise line.

[archifreese]

this thread is getting really good. the subway suggestion (which i have heard of before) sounds insane but perhaps may be the most realistic thing available to us for a permanent solution. though i have often wondered if they couldnt run it above ground through alleys or something on washington but i know that would be drama with the residents and everyone.
the problem with the streetcar proposal is that it would cause the 1-lane each way problem when it runs in traffic on alton & washington. i was in baltimore were they have a similar version of 'baylink' and those streets got backed up during peak hours just because the traffic volume > surface area of lanes. without the streetcar those streets would have flowed smoothly.
i saw on one televised commision meeting afterwards when they were slowly killing it, as i recall the consultants suggested getting rid of the blockbuster at 17/alton to give a better turning radius and eleviate pressure on traffic. The lady (whose name i think is matty?) said it was historically a funeral home and probably was a very significant building in the city or something. i couldnt believe it. they also increased the budget bysomething like $40 million asking that the streetcar be responsible for the developing of a new bridge over dade blvd. canal @ west ave to ease traffic and avoid the 17th/alton intersection.
anyways i want something here and the whole riffraff - exactly havok they r already getting here and who cares cities are for everybody its the commitment of the city/citizens to maintain respectable standards of living not 2 stand by and complain that someone should prohibit or exile the undesirables.

[kevinkagy]

Speaking of non-English speakers, why aren't all the signs and p.a. systems on the trains and stations in both Spanish and English, since the majority of Miami is Spanish? I was wondering that as I was taking the train because I had atleast 4 people ask me to translate for them because they didn't speak English (I speak Spanish) and I thought it makes a lot of sense to translate everything into Spanish.

[miamicanes]

Well, the next-best proposal I've seen is to run a Metromover line out to the beach. I think it was proposed by Bruno Barriero. There are lots of nice things about Metromover:

* driverless, so it can run 24/7 and every few minutes

* nearly silent, so it could literally run a foot or two away from someone's window without bothering them.

* runs entirely in its own right-of-way, so it wouldn't screw up traffic like a trolley would.

Along the causeway, it could run at ground level, then once it hits the beach it could go elevated, ideally with the same inner loop/outer loop design as downtown... trains coming from the mainland would head over to Washington, up to 17th, over to Alton, and down to 5th before returning to the mainland, while the inner loop went clockwise and ran in the opposite direction. With a triangular (more or less) platform at Fifth Street, someone getting on the outer loop just north of fifth street heading to the ocean would hop off at fifth street station, walk 20-100 feet to the adjacent side of the triangular platform, and board the next outer loop train arriving from the mainland (the third side would be for inner loop trains).

The main problem I can see with running driverless at ground level along the causeway would be the perceived need for a fence to keep people from walking in front of the trains and getting mowed down (or a car somehow winding up across a track and causing a major accident when a 'mover slammed into it at full speed). One possible solution might be to slightly modify the vehicles so they actually DID have a human semi-driving them for the ground-level run along the causeway (basically, able to stop or slow down the vehicle as he deemed appropriate). A team of 3-5 drivers would basically get on at the last station on the mainland, drive it to Fifth Street, then get off and wait for the next train needing a driver to the mainland (with the control center occasionally telling a driver to hop on a train with another driver if the computer told them they'd have a driver shortage at the other station if they didn't). Then, they'd just need a 4 foot low ornamental steel fence with pointy spikes along the top to visually convey the message to pedestrians that the area on the other side is "off limits" without unduly blocking motorists' view of the water.

[ChuckScraperMiami#1]

Originally Posted by Roark

Enhancing transportation isn't an overnight project, and many of the improvements are in their infancy, but if you think the city/civic leaders are just sleeping on this, think again.
Here is the 30 Year Transportation Master PlanA very sexy and interesting report! Enjoy!

Roark , my friend , does this really mean they will start construction in 30 years , maybe by 2035, lol . I need a gun at the Gun show this weekend, my days are being numbered here, lol.

[BornInTheGrove]

not 100% sure, but i do vaguely remember something on election day, when the resident's of miami-dade voted for the half cent tax for the PTP... didn't the city leaders and what have u say that the metrorail and all its expansion would take about 20 years to get done.. ??

[dave8721]

About watery subways, Boston's "T" runs underground through sections of Boston's Back Bay which is basically a landfill reclaimed from the Charles River and is some of the wettest, softest muck imaginable. Subways can be built literally underwater (as in lying on the sea floor) they did it in boston. They built a levee around a small section of the harbor, drained the water, dropped the already built section of tunnel in the let the water back in. You just have to make sure its leak proof (the new construction in Boston wasn't...oops). Water doesn't make projects impossible, it just makes them cost more. Obviously ground level is cheapest, followed by elevated, then below ground. Unfortunately below ground would be the most desireable.

[miamicanes]

One of the more creative ideas I came up with was posted to halfbakery.com long ago -- http://www.halfbakery.com/idea/Subwa...ain_20elevator

It would let the train run at-grade along the causeway (giving tourists a pretty view), go elevated just in time to head over Alton Road and pull into the first station, then drop straight down into the tunnel after passengers exit and enter, and continue underground the remainder of the way. Crazy, but immensely cool

[Alien x]

Originally Posted by jdnn

I'm curious about where you got this information. I'm kind of surprised and impressed (if this is true). It would be amazing to think that a swamp became an island with compact and dry ground suitable enough for a subway. It sounds like we could make a subway in any body of water if we just add a "Miami Beach."

South Florida is viewed is a swamp but its not that simple. When the original project of the current east/west Metrorail came out it included a section that was underground from the Orange Bowl to Port of Miami with a future possible extension to South Beach. The geologist, at the time, explained why this was possible. South Florida is actually a bowl the inner sections are soft and swampy but the area along the coast is actually made extremely compact limestone, non porous, (don’t forget that marble is compacted limestone). The area where Miami is built, from the Rickenbacker Causeway on to the north, is made from this hard crust which makes it ideal for tall structures underground drilling. This crust extends to South Beach at various depths at not more then +/-30 feet of depth and what you consider swamp island, except for South Point Park, is solid ground. The reason that this part of east/west corridor became a problem was 1. the cost of drilling would be extreme and 2. the perception of most people, wrongly, was that it would be always flooded.