page_title: Transportation in South Florida
section_title: Automobile dependency
hierarchical_section_title: Transportation in South Florida / Road transportation / Automobile dependency
caption_attribution_description: English: Digital photo taken by Marc Averette. Met 2 in Downtown Miami, Florida, United States.
context_page_description: The Greater Miami area, composed of the three counties of Miami-Dade, Broward, and Palm Beach, also known collectively as South Florida, is home to a wide variety of public and private transportation systems. These include heavy rail mass transit, commuter rail, automated guideway transit, highways, two major airports and seaports, as well as three county-wide bus networks, which cover the entire urbanized area of South Florida. Census and ridership data show that Miami has the highest public transportation usage of any city in Florida, as about 17% of Miamians use public transportation on a regular basis, compared to about 4% of commuters in the South Florida metropolitan area. The majority of public transportation in Miami is operated by Miami-Dade Transit, which is currently the largest transit system in Florida and was the 14th largest transit system in the United States in 2011.
  South Florida is one of the most densely populated urbanized areas in the United States overall, being bound by the Atlantic Ocean to the east and the South Florida Water Management District and the Everglades to the west, with a fairly strict Urban Development Boundary.
context_section_description: The Miami area is known for its high level of automobile dependency and shortage of public transportation, which has led to an increasing traffic congestion problem throughout the county. Nearly 20% of household income is spent on transportation and Miami had the most decentralized office space of any metropolitan area in the United States, according to a study in 2000. Despite overwhelming support for public transportation to be funded instead of several new highways in the 1970s, Miami's Metrorail system was not operational until 1984 and as of 2014 has not yet reached the scope which was promised over 30 years ago. Ridership did not initially meet expectations in the early years of the system, averaging less than 10,000 riders per day. The system was not entirely finished, which led to criticism from then President Ronald Reagan, who claimed “it would have been a lot cheaper to buy everyone a limousine.” Those in favor of the mass transit system stated that the initially low ridership was due to the system being incomplete and not going where people needed it to, and noted that within a few years ridership was nearing 50,000 per day. Many of Miami-Dade County and Florida's politicians have been opponents to transportation alternatives which lessen traffic congestion. For example, both state governors Jeb Bush and Rick Scott denied funding for an intercity high-speed rail system in Florida. Two state senators tried to force Rick Scott to accept the funding, but the Florida Supreme Court denied the case and the funding was later directed to several other rail projects across the United States.
  The half penny transit tax approved in November 2002 as part of the People's Transportation Plan was promised to fund at least the Metrorail Orange Line expansions in the short term, with a long term promise to build nearly 90 miles (145 km) of track and 50 stations for Metrorail, among other things. The plan stated that no more than five percent of tax proceeds would go to administration costs. A federal investigation in 2011 has led to Miami-Dade Transit's perception as an unaccountable organization.
  Therefore, the Miami metropolitan area remains highly automobile dependent, with a prominent grid system made up of many wide, dangerous roads interlaced with various highways, most of which have tolls. Office buildings and other high-rises and semi dense communities are spread sparsely throughout the area, with a lowly defined central business district and no defined edge cities, leading to many long commutes in all directions. The lack of density and transit-oriented development also helped lead to the downfall of the Metrorail Orange Line North Corridor along NW 27 Avenue. Many of the buildings in downtown Miami sit atop large parking pedestals, often over 10 stories high, or have a separate, proprietary parking garage on site, such as the 14-story Southeast Financial Center parking annex. Other than the Government Center transit hub and the Miami Tower, both built in the 1980s in conjunction with the system, no buildings were built with a direct connection to the Metromover until Brickell City Centre in 2015. Despite this, nearly all the condos built in the 2000s and 2010s real estate boom were in the downtown area along the Metromover lines, leading to a doubling in ridership from 2000 to 2011, with daily average ridership now at over 30,000.
caption: A parking garage constitutes nearly half the volume of this new high rise in Downtown Miami
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