Dolphin Commuters to Be Socked With New Toll
By Larry Lebowitz, The Miami Herald
Jun. 20–The daily drive from western Miami-Dade and Broward counties is about to grow costlier for hundreds of thousands of commuters and truckers who have grown accustomed to using one of South Florida’s busiest expressways for free.
Thursday, the Miami-Dade Expressway Authority will officially open a controversial new toll plaza at the western end of the Dolphin Expressway near Northwest 97th Avenue.
MDX won’t start collecting tolls — 75 cents in each direction for SunPass customers, $1 cash — until July 1.
“I know there are a lot of people out here who are really upset with that new toll,” said Jeff Wander, a retired Miami-Dade police sergeant who lives in Lakes by the Meadow. “It’s going to be a huge, one-two sucker punch for people in West Kendall.”
An estimated 108,500 vehicles will pass through the new plaza every day, generating an additional $33 million in annual revenue to MDX.
In addition to the plaza, the authority also will be cutting the ribbon on a new three-mile extension of the Dolphin from Florida’s Turnpike west to 137th Avenue and then south to Tamiami Trail.
The $225 million extension — open only to SunPass users — is the first new road the authority has built in its 11-year history.
To handle the additional traffic entering and exiting the extension, Miami-Dade and the state paid a combined $22 million to six-lane 137th Avenue between Northwest 12th Street and Tamiami Trail.
Located on the edge of the county’s Urban Development Boundary, that section of 137th Avenue used to be a two-lane dirt road along a mucky canal leading to a concrete plant and industrial area.
The extension is expected to provide a much-needed new access point to the highway network for tens of thousands of residents in the far western suburbs.
Commuters who have been stuck in heavy traffic on Tamiami Trail or Bird Road trying to get to the turnpike will have a new way to get to Doral, Miami International Airport or downtown Miami.
But they will be paying an additional $2 a day for the round-trip privilege — 50 cents at a SunPass toll gantry over the extension and $1.50 at the new plaza.
The expressway extension and the expansion of 137th Avenue were completed with little neighborhood opposition — perhaps a reflection of how bad congestion has become in the western suburbs.
But the new toll plaza has drawn plenty of controversy.
“Look, nobody likes paying a toll, we know that,” said Javier Rodriguez, who became MDX executive director in March after 15 years with the state Department of Transportation. “But as long as we put the information out there, make our case and explain what people are going to get for their money … how the money that is paid in Dade County is going to stay in Dade County, people understand that.”
But state Rep. Juan C. Zapata, who represents Sweetwater and several West Kendall communities, isn’t very understanding. Zapata has consistently decried the way MDX approved the new plaza with little public input in 2004.
“That’s another $400 a year that my people are going to be paying in tolls that they aren’t paying today,” Zapata said. ‘At the end of the day, my people are going to be asking, ‘Why am I paying more? How’s that going to make my commute any easier?’ And it’s not. That’s insulting.”
Zapata was so peeved that he has unsuccessfully tried in three consecutive sessions to pass legislation that would have severely altered the MDX power structure and limited its ability to raise tolls.
MDX officials counter that the new toll plaza will generate millions of new dollars that will be used to expand and improve all five east-west expressways in Miami-Dade. It is also a matter of basic fairness, they say.
More than 700,000 vehicles use MDX’s five expressways on a typical day, but due to the placement of the plazas, only 28 percent of the drivers systemwide pay 100 percent of the tolls.
“A lot of people can access our expressways, do their commute and never pay a toll,” said MDX’s Rodriguez. “And it’s just not fair to those people who do [pay].”
One of the most glaring examples is on the Dolphin Expressway, the east-west economic spine for Miami-Dade that connects the shopping malls and trucking warehouses out west to the airport and downtown in the east.
Hundreds of thousands of vehicles drive the Dolphin every day without paying a dime because the only toll is collected eastbound near downtown.
With the new 97th Avenue plaza, MDX consultants estimate the number of vehicles riding the system for free will shrink from 72 percent today to 58 percent.
Other critics, including former traffic helicopter reporter Dave Slater, wonder why MDX needed to open a $67 million new plaza that will become obsolete as the authority converts to an all-electronic, cashless system over the next decade.
“It’s pure lunacy,” Slater said. “The MDX itself is saying they want to eliminate toll plazas and go all electronic, so why spend millions building new ones to tear them down later. It’s just more poor planning — the story of traffic in Dade County.”
Under the Open Road Tolling program, toll plazas would eventually be replaced by a cashless system of electronic sensors hanging over travel lanes at 22 locations along the five expressways and at 22 strategically selected entrance and exit ramps. All expressway users would have to have Sunpasses.
But an all-electronic Dolphin won’t occur until 2012 at the earliest, when the state is scheduled to complete the $880 million, four-level interchange at the Palmetto Expressway (State Road 826).
The authority insists the new plaza won’t be demolished. It will be converted to a retail outlet in the center median where customers will be able to buy and replenish SunPass accounts, pay violations and conduct other authority business.
MDX is already working with local police agencies to contend with the likely bottlenecks that would occur as some drivers take surface streets to dodge the new toll plaza.
Miami-Dade police will be patrolling near the 107th Avenue and 87th Avenue exits to contend with some of the spillover traffic that is likely to occur on Northwest 12th and Flagler streets and Tamiami Trail.
Rodriguez doesn’t anticipate the diversion will last too long as drivers realize the side streets are in worse shape than the expressway.
Plenty of people in the western suburbs support the new tolls — as long as MDX produces results.
“I think any relief is good relief,” said Kent Crook, who lives in West Kendall. “Anything that lessens the load, I’m all for it. If my guys have to stand in traffic a half hour instead of an hour; absolutely, I’m for it.”
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