👔 The Suits vs. The People – A Workshop Recap (Ocean Drive Edition)
Turnout was massive in support of people oriented streets
Last week, the City of Miami Beach held a workshop to discuss the future of Ocean Drive and Washington Ave – click here to watch the whole meeting.
Turnout was big (both virtually and in-person), and there were two clear camps in the audience:
The People (aka residents of Miami Beach) showed up, spoke up, called, and emailed in favor of the pedestrianization of Ocean Drive and preserving the Washington Avenue bike lanes.
The Suits (aka the hospitality industry) made their case for bringing back cars to Ocean Drive. Some were allotted up to 3 minutes to speak (vs 1 minute for residents), some offered “donations” (seemingly in exchange for reintroducing cars to the street), and some had cringey racist undertones.
So, what went down?
Two concerns became an ongoing theme throughout the meeting: coming up with a solution to get people to and from the entrance of their hotels in Ocean Drive, and preventing groups of people from gathering and drinking in the streets; both of which can be addressed without the addition of private cars onto the road.
Three plans were presented:
Option A: Would bring back two lanes of car traffic onto Ocean Drive
Option B: Would bring back one lane of car traffic onto Ocean Drive
Option C: Suggested by the Ocean Drive Association – Would maintain Ocean Drive pedestrianized and introduce the use of Freebees as a solution for hotel guest arrivals and departures
In the end, a recommendation was made for the city manager to come up with modified versions of Option B and C based on the discussion. Some of the ideas that floated around include introducing a tram/trolley to jet guests to their hotel lobbies and pedestrianizing only the denser residential segments of Ocean Drive. The city manager will be presenting these updated versions at the October 27th commission meeting.
We think the most sensible solution is to keep the street car-free and give guests a high-end experience to get to and from their hotels. From Barcelona’s La Rambla to Times Square in NYC, there is a multitude of case studies that we can take a page from. We sincerely hope our City Manager considers and incorporates elements of these successful examples worldwide in the plans that will be presented next month.
So… Where do our Commissioners stand on the pedestrianization of Ocean Drive?
COMMISSIONER MEINER → PRO PEDESTRIANIZATION
I see that we have an issue right now, that there is a lot of congregating on the street and this party atmosphere and it’s a problem, it is a big problem. But I am also not convinced that having the cars go back on the street is going to solve the problem.
It’s a tough call, but I also hear the hotel’s argument, I’ve seen it personally, I’ve seen people sort of schlepping their luggage to get to their hotels, that’s not optimal either. But ultimately, where I fall out is I’d like to see some kind of keeping it pedestrianized and trying to come up with some solution to help the hotels and businesses get people to and from, but ultimately keep that street open and keep it moving, keep it moving so we don’t have people congregating around.
COMMISSIONER ARRIOLA → PRO PEDESTRIANIZATION
I lean in the direction of the ODA recommendation, I think we are calling it option C, because that’s what I’ve always envisioned. Long before COVID I always wanted to see Ocean Drive pedestrianized. To address the concerns of the local businesses, how do you move travelers and other guests up and down Ocean Drive? You look at what some of the finest resorts around the world, whether it’s Disney World or resorts out in Hawaii or anywhere, they have these beautiful trams, and we can brand them any way we want, and control their behaviors so there’s no loud music or anything, and that’s the way you get people up and down the street safely and comfortably, and that’s what we should be striving for ultimately, so that’s the way I’m leaning.
A couple of comments, colleagues. Public safety is our number one job as elected officials, there’s a lot of ways you get to public safety and one of the ways you get to public safety is through design. It’s not just policing and security equipment, it’s also through intelligent design. What we are doing here today and in future workshops is trying to design something that promotes public safety. I think what we’ve done the last year or so in closing Ocean Drive, we’ve had some successes and we’ve had some misses, and we are going to learn from them. But we shouldn’t abandon what we’ve started just because we’ve had some mishaps, there are a lot of things that have worked very well.
COMMISSIONER SAMUELIAN → PRO PEDESTRIANIZATION
I land in the camp of option C, and I think my logic is in line with Commissioner Meiner’s. I think we need to bring our residents back to Ocean Drive, I strongly support the Mayor’s vision of live, work, play, and I believe that this environment is better suited without the noise and the traffic. I’m scared very much about the slingshots, and the scooters, and the problems that that can bring.
And so, for me, I think we need to build on the success we’ve had. I think we’ve given residents a reason to come, and that’s to enjoy cycling and walking. I think the enhancement on option C that I would very much like to see the city pursue is, could the Freebee’s be part of the security solution with cameras? Those eyes on the street. I think they’ve done it in other cities, I really would like to push on that. I think this fits with the global trend that streets should be multimodal, that there are multiple ways to move around. All across the world, I’ve seen it in New York, in Boston, we are having people on bicycles and walking, we are going in the right direction. I think we need to modify what we have, and I think we have the ideas to do it.
COMMISSIONER GÓNGORA → PRO CARS
I’ve been leaning towards some type of modified version of option B, I think that we need to look for a way to reintroduce a lane of traffic and see how it works. This is a pilot, this isn’t the end of the world. If it’s not working, the same way that the commission can move forward with one idea, they can change it back.
And speaking of cringey, we had to highlight this bit…
I also think we need to work with our businesses and encourage them to maintain the highest level of standards, because I think during the pandemic some of them were dropping their prices and dropping their value, and it attracts a bad crowd. When you get a crowd that can go there and pay 50% or 25% of what it used to cost to stay on Ocean Drive or to eat in a restaurant on Ocean Drive you get that crowd, and then the people that are willing to pay top dollar don’t want to come back because when they’ve been there they’ve seen a crowd that they didn’t want to spend a lot of money to mix and mingle with. So we need to make sure that we keep everything at the highest level possible, that we brand our city, especially iconic Ocean Drive, at the highest level possible.
COMMISSIONER RICHARDSON → PRO CARS
I’m not a cruising expert, but I think you generally have less cruising problems when you are moving in one direction, rather than two, because part of the cruising enthusiasts enjoy the two-fold traffic, so you have a party with each passing vehicle, the shoutout and the wave. We will have the slingshots and so forth, again, I’m not a cruising expert, just what I read.
So here’s what I’d like to throw out, what I would like to see is to start with the Ocean Drive B and to have the bike lane as we have described it, and I would also support spending the extra money to paint green lanes all the way down, I think it’s worth the money for safety. I would put that in stone because I think that you can have it in both versions.
I think we should try the one-way traffic, with the B, I think we should try that, because again, my number one concern is public safety and I don’t think the Ocean Drive Association preferred option is going to get me my primary goal of taking up the street and addressing the public safety. And also, because of the cost. So I would like to see us try the option B, we are going to know quickly if it works or doesn’t work. If it doesn’t work then it seems to me that it’s a pretty easy face in to get to the Ocean Drive, but I would want to keep that bike lane there because I want the wider bike lane, but then we could change out the vehicle traffic with either a tram or some sort of other vehicle.
COMMISSIONER STEINBERG → WE DON’T KNOW…
When we talk about keeping things moving there are so many different iterations of how we can do that, I know there’s different variations. We can’t look at this in a vacuum, when we look at Ocean Drive we have to look at all the adjacent streets to see how everything that we do here is going to affect all the other streets. We need to be really looking at this from a macro vision, and I know our long term vision is absolutely to have it be pedestrian, so everything we are doing now, whether it’s option B or the ODA version, or some hybrid version C that the mayor brought up, that’s the short-term, Alina? Is that what you are trying to understand, what we are doing just short-term while we implement the other long-term piece?
City Manager Alina Hudack confirms and clarifies that in this case, the “temporary” configuration can potentially last 2-3 years.
That does change things because we have to look at short-term, mid-term, and long-term.
In the interest of keeping things short (which we did not) we’ll be debriefing on the discussion on Washington Ave in an upcoming email, stay tuned!
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