page_title: Transportation in South Florida
section_title: Other road infrastructure
hierarchical_section_title: Transportation in South Florida / Road transportation / Other road infrastructure
caption_attribution_description: English: A en:traffic light at a large intersection in Florida
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 grid throughout most of Miami-Dade County, with the exception of a few cities such as Coral Gables, is a simple axis-oriented numbered street pattern. Flagler Street forms the north–south divider and Miami Avenue forms the east–west divider between roads. Hence, all streets travel east–west and all avenues travel north–south, with the numbers increasing uniformly away from the dividers. Nearly all streets are referred to and indicated by number and all have a prefix (NW, NE, SW, SE) to determine their quadrant. Many of the busier, arterial roads, are also known by their common name, such as West 42nd Avenue, which is often referred to as LeJeune Road.
  All streets and avenues in Miami-Dade County follow the "Miami grid," with a few exceptions, most notably Coral Gables, Hialeah, and Miami Beach. The grid pattern was adopted after World War I as the common naming system proved too confusing, particularly for mail carriers. The grid pattern is laid out primarily in 1 mi x 1 mi format based on a survey technique called metes and bounds. Within those larger squares, individual developers and cities platted the lots differently, and they do not always cross the major roads that create the macro-grid. These major roads usually are  able to cross physical boundaries such as canals and highways, while the intermediate streets within them typically do not. One off-grid neighborhood in Miami, The Roads, is thus named because its streets run off the Miami grid in an approximately 45-degree angle, and therefore all streets are known by their number with the suffix "Road" vs Street. Another busy off-grid road is Okeechobee Road (U.S. Route 27), which travels diagonally through the urban area from the northeast corner of Miami International Airport through Hialeah. Additionally, U.S. Route 1, known better locally as South Dixie Highway, Brickell Avenue and Biscayne Boulevard, does not follow grid pattern.
  The majority of surface roads in Broward and Palm Beach Counties similarly follow a grid pattern. With notable exceptions including dead-ends and private roads in gated communities, which are common in South Florida.
  While the Florida Department of Transportation operates and maintains most of the larger surface roads, even in incorporated areas, municipalities such as the City of Miami occasionally try to assume control over specific roads. These often include highly urban roads in the downtown area such as Brickell Avenue, where they feel the more broad scoped and highway oriented FDOT is inadequate in understanding the needs of such roads.
caption: A very large intersection between two surface roads in Broward County; University Drive intersects Pembroke Road.
exif: {"Image Make": "LG Electronics", "Image Model": "VS910 4G", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "72", "Image YResolution": "72", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image DateTime": "2014:08:27 01:53:34", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Centered", "Image ExifOffset": "2252", "Image XPKeywords": "[116, 0, 114, 0, 97, 0, 102, 0, 102, 0, 105, 0, 99, 0, 32, 0, 108, 0, 105, 0, ... ]", "Image Padding": "[]", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "4626", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "6052", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0220", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2011:11:26 14:25:17", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2011:11:26 14:25:17", "EXIF ComponentsConfiguration": "YCbCr", "EXIF FocalLength": "431/100", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0100", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "2592", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "1534", "Interoperability InteroperabilityIndex": "R98", "Interoperability InteroperabilityVersion": "[48, 49, 48, 48]", "EXIF InteroperabilityOffset": "4498", "EXIF ImageUniqueID": "3BB5FC9577D94C84A0A2506C9B898861", "EXIF Padding": "[]"}