MDC and Cycling — Time to Change Miami

Back in April of this year, I wrote an article making suggestions to improve the state of cycling at Wolfson Campus. Though the campus hosts a large, multi-story parking garage that provides safe and convenient parking for students who drive to school, cyclists remain relegated to unsecure racks and streetside signposts to park.

Meanwhile, The League of American Bicyclists’ list of Bicycle Friendly Universities (BFUs) recognized nine out of the top ten national colleges and universities in the U.S. as being bicycle friendly. A bicycle friendly campus may host a comprehensive bike path network, educational classes for beginner cyclists, ample and secure bicycle parking facilities and public events to promote cycling. Boston’s Harvard University, Pennsylvania’s Montgomery County Community College and North Carolina’s Chapel Hill are some of the universities that took the initiative to make cycling a truly viable transportation option for their students.

Why is Miami Dade College lagging behind?

For my four years of high school, I attended South Miami Senior High. Directly west of the school is a patch of abandoned grass with an air of dereliction that no one could ignore.

Now, it’s the subject of a vision and an ensuing debate over whether the vision is going to become reality.

I’m talking about the Ludlam Trail, a vision that would revitalize a 6.2 mile stretch of former railroad line into a multi-use trail for bicycles and pedestrians similar to the M-Path that runs under the Metrorail. It runs through various thoroughfares such as the Tamiami Trail and Bird Road and through parts of the City of Miami, unincorporated Miami-Dade County and South Miami.

The land is still owned by Florida East Coast Railway. Friends of The Ludlam Trail, a non-for-profit organization, has been instrumental in rekindling interest in the modification of the territory, which if realized, would be part of a growing series of railway to trailway conversions throughout South Florida.

Flagler, the development company that owns access to the land, likes the idea of a multi-use path but also wants to build homes and businesses along the trail, which the Miami Herald notes is only 100 feet and compresses to nearly 50 feet in some places.

On Dec. 4 the Miami-Dade County Commissions withdrew Flagler’s plan for the trail. The county attorney directed the withdrawal to be reconsidered an item for May 2015. The Ludlam Trail Facebook page announced their desire to work with Flagler and the county commission over the next six months in hope of a balanced plan for the trail.

The Ludlam Trail case connects to MDC’s heretofore inability to provide a bicycle friendly campus because the College finds itself in a county that’s in a nascent love affair with walkability, sustainability and cycling as transportation.

Day after day, people shut themselves off from each other in their air-conditioned automobiles and commute for an hour or more to their job, accepting the boredom and wastefulness of burning gasoline in traffic as a circumstance of where they live.

Harvard University’s location in a city that prizes cycling undoubtedly makes it easier for the institution to do the same on its campus. Miami Dade College has it harder — it must become the agent of fundamental change in a city that has adored the automobile so much that the relationship has become a little too clingy.

Each one of its campuses attracts thousands of students on a daily basis, some of whom would consider cycling to class were the appropriate facilities available. It can start at the College, expand to neighboring communities, and perhaps ultimately rid Miami of its own inability to tell its automobiles to lay off.