Friday, November 15, 2019

Throwing NBV Transit Users Under the Bus

 

Did You See The Part About The L Bus No Longer Running to South Beach?

If you watched Tuesday night's express commission meeting, you probably missed the portion about the commission approving a plan to eliminate L bus service to South Beach.

Don't feel bad.

The commissioners missed it too. 

It was buried in the "Consent Agenda", the part of the agenda for items so obvious that they don't merit discussion.

Except this one did.  The discussion was held at the Resident Services Advisory Board meeting on November 3 for a half hour.   While the Board was drowned in numbers about how many more employment opportunities this would open to North Bay Village residents, it also came out that the plan called for the elimination of the bus route to South Beach, a route that is used by North Bay Villagers working in South Beach and by a surprising number  of Miami Beach High School students, who are often at school later or earlier than the usual transit options because of extracurricular activities.   You know, poor people and young people.  And the occasional eccentric blogger who'd rather not park. 

The L bus has long been major transit line for North Bay Village and we'd lose it.

The Resident Services Board voted clearly to only recommend the model proposed if it included an amendment to ensure the L bus continued to serve through South Beach. 

Yet the Village Staff not only did not include this recommendation in the resolution, they buried the whole mess in the Consent Agenda. 

This effort by the Better Bus Project is clearly a way to get around how the 1/2 cent tax Miami-Dade residents imposed on ourselves was squandered.  You might remember the train routes planned?  The high speed bus lanes?  We paid for them but the money never made it to the streets. 

Now the "Better Bus Project" is cheerily creating a false choice between increased coverage or increased ridership with virtually impenetrable numbers.

Among the groups that are not buying into it are the NAACP and the County Commission so they are selling their results in shows at the municipal level. 

That either option proposed by the Better Bus Project will make transit demonstrably less useful for North Bay Villagers should have been the commission's concern. 

Nevertheless the staff failed to include the requested condition made by resident volunteers who advise the commission on the matters in the resolution. 

So the Commission dutifully voted to eliminate the L bus without understanding the implications to North Bay Villagers, not to mention the residents of Little River and other Miami neighborhoods who depend on this route to get to work and recreation. 

For an explanation of the "Better Bus" project, see today's Miami Herald.  For my money, the best quote is County Commissioner Dennis Moss “You can’t grow ridership if you’ve got no rides.”

The fault is not just the village staff's.  Any one of the five commissioners could have pulled the item for discussion.  None did.   After a full year, a very full year, they should have enough experience to know that when an item is controversial, it is no longer suited for the consent agenda.   In fact, they should eliminate the consent agenda.  It's too often abused and if the item is that obvious, it won't kill them to take an extra 2 minutes to consider it. 

There Is Good Transit News For North Bay Village

IMG_6725FreeBee is replacing our Island Hopper for local trips.  A free to use, on demand app that will take you anwhere in the Village from 10 AM to 7 PM, Monday through Friday with a plan to expand to Saturdays and will take you to either Collins and 71st or Biscayne and 79th was introduced this month to ... no fanfare.  

But it's an awesome service and a major improvement over our seldom used Island Hopper.  Why the Village has not advertised the heck out of this is beyond me.   

And there's more.   

Commissioner Jose Alvarez
The Island Hopper starting December 3rd will now run express to the Omni Transit Center 3 times during the morning rush hour and 3 times back.  Watch carefully for the schedule since the Village is not good at communicating things but this will be a free service that will make direct public transit to downtown possible.  
This the result of months of hard work by the village staff and several of the commissioners.   
Now it gets weird.  Remember Commissioner Jose Alvarez?  Mary Kramer's Husband?  Who has been on the dais for three years and who to my knowledge has never offered a single piece of legislation or sponsored anything?   Well, he was as surprised as everyone else when it was announced that this initiative was somehow his idea and he got to announce the new service (well read it from a card.)  

I mean, seriously, what is up with that?    

The Meeting Itself

A few months ago, the village staff decided that the what the commissioners needed less of was hearing from the residents and so they took the historically inadequate 3 minutes granted to residents during Good & Welfare, now less elegantly called Open Forum to 2 minutes and the commission without questioning it, adopted the procedure.   

Public comment is only allowed for 2 minutes as well.   

It was clear from the 6 people who spoke that this was inadequate and the mayor at least seemed frustrated at the change, which nobody could remember when it was made.   But the other commissioners made no attempt to change it back by resolution.   So congratulations to the four!  After all, they were elected to do as little as possible and they are at least streamlining that.  

Image result for 4 moa statue
The Four Commissioners
In fact, it is remarkable how little engagement there is from the four commissioners.  While Marvin Wilmoth (who did actual work on the downtown express project) has taken the lead on several resiliency issues, and Julianna Strout has sponsored the legislation to bring CitiBike to the Village, for the most part, they just sit silently, often staring at their phones, questioning little but occasionally complaining that the mayor is doing too much actual work.   Maybe we're better off but it looks bad.  

So We Are Going Backwards?  

No.  We are miles ahead of last year at this time.  No meltdowns from the dais, no underhanded real estate agents paying our village manager off the books, lawyers who pay attention to legal matters, residents involved in the process.   

That bar was pretty low.   Still North Bay Village is making progress.   Now it has to pull together and make progress a shared value.  The management has to promote the village and involve all aspects of the community.  The commission needs to come out of their passive state and start doing what they are supposed to.  Commissioners should not steal the credit for what was not their work. 

The future is bright but it gets a little dimmer every time the petty positioning blocks the light.  

Image result for two steps forward one step back

Kevin Vericker
November 15, 2019


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