Waving signs that read “No Hostages” and “Enough is Enough,” residents angered by massive traffic jams on the Rickenbacker Causeway poured into Tuesday’s Village Council meeting, demanding officials take a stronger hand with Miami-Dade County and the City of Miami, the governments that control most of the six-mile roadway.
Key Biscayne officials said they scheduled a meeting with Miami-Dade Mayor Daniella Levine Cava and her top aides for Monday. Commissioner Raquel Regalado, who is co-hosting the session, said the goal is to get overlapping jurisdictions on the same page to help clear the bottlenecks —and not the longer-term ideas to renovate the Rickenbacker that might take a decade.
Manager Steve Williamson sought to blunt the criticism by writing a three-page letter to the community and blasting it out on the Village’s email system Monday. He wrote that traffic from Crandon Park has increased 50% in the past two years, with similar increases at Bill Baggs Cape Florida and Hobie Island parks. He repeated that the Village’s strategy remains cooperation, not confrontation.
“We are collaborating with the right people,” he wrote.
But the promises of more discussion didn’t move residents, who said they’ve seen it all before as the delays worsen, especially in peak visitor season.
“We’re in crisis mode here,” said Manny Cambo, the owner of an island hardware store who said he’s had to close his business and send employees home, costing him thousands. “You’re doing us wrong. Why can’t we fight back?”
“Enough is enough,” said Michele Estevez, a former council member and business leader, who delivered 2,300 petitions demanding a residents’ lane from the barrier island connecting Miami to some of its signature parks and beaches. “We cannot be anymore hostages.”
Resident Gina Heise, who’s been on the island for 47 years, worried about her husband’s previous heart attack. “Can we have helicopter service?” she pleaded, suggesting reactivating the Biscayne Bay helipad built for President Richard Nixon in the 1960s.
She was not reassured when Mayor Joe Rasco said choppers can indeed land on the island.
“I’m begging you,” she insisted, noting that even driving to a restaurant a few blocks away is impossible when jams spillover onto local streets, causing island-wide gridlock.
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But with two TV stations filming, some in the crowd said Williamson was being too timid in advocating for the Village. Mayra Peña Lindsay, a former mayor, said Williamson’s email was “pablum trying to calm residents down.”
Lindsay said the Village PR firm, HML Public Outreach, which is tasked with promoting the Big Dig flooding project, should pivot to traffic instead. The target, she said, should not be Key Biscayne, but a County audience and the traffic’s impact on millions of beachgoers.
Lindsay, while mayor, tried to stop the Ultra Music Festival with such a campaign, having earlier sued the City of Miami over Boat Show jams. She stopped short of endorsing another round of litigation.
But others said the Village needs to press the issue in court again. Some residents have started a second petition, asking the County to implement congestion pricing when beaches and parks start filling to danger levels on sunny weekends.
As for emergency access, Police Chief Frank Sousa said his department is doing the best it can and has excellent relationships with the Miami-Dade Sheriff and City police agencies, and is ready to even drive ATVs on beaches to ferry critical medical cases when the Causeway is jammed. Citing the complexity of the problem, he said experiments with altered traffic flows have only been partially effective.
“It’s three different law enforcement agencies, trying to find the solution for everybody that’s right and just. I’m not going to sit here and say I have all the answers,” he told council members.
Sousa said that even temporary electronic signage warning of full parks, or ideas to better handle Uber and Lyft traffic have been thwarted by what he called “Matheson regulations,” — a reference to a court settlement that created a little-known committee that can veto changes at Crandon Park.
Council Member Michael Bracken said the Village should conduct an emergency exercise to test and verify it can transport residents. “Say someone is at the Ocean Club on the 20th floor. How do we get them out of there, assuming the roads are locked?” he asked Sousa.
“Give people the assurances that we could actually do it,” Bracken asked.
This story was originally published in the Key Biscayne Independent, a WLRN News partner.
