Running his third campaign for Miami-Dade mayor, Alex Penelas faced off against four sitting county commissioners on Monday to litigate which 2020 candidate carries the most blame for the county’s stagnant, underfunded transit system.
It was the first forum to draw the former mayor and the Miami-Dade commissioners running to replace Carlos Gimenez next year. A transportation question quickly turned to the half-percent sales tax passed under Penelas in 2002 with a plan for a historic expansion of rail and bus service that never materialized.
It was in the late 1990s when a consulting engineer named Alice Bravo was assigned to an ambitious study: how to extend rail west into the Miami-Dade suburbs. Some 20 years later, Bravo runs the county’s Transportation Department and Miami-Dade is once again studying the same thing. “That was when I was a little girl. I worked on it,” Bravo joked Thursday after a meeting of Miami-Dade’s Transportation Planning Organization, which two years ago authorized a new study on whether to extend Metrorail along State Road 836 and connect the Doral area with downtown Miami. “When we did that east-west study, the city of Doral didn’t exist.” A county audit offers the latest reminder that Miami-Dade’s current push to settle on a historic transit plan is a repeat of past efforts. A 2018 audit of Miami-Dade’s transit spending includes a brief passage summarizing past expenditures on the six commuting corridors being studied under the county’s 2016 SMART Plan. Dade County Mayoral Candidate Forum/ Pictures Image 1 Image 1 Image 1 Image 1 Image 1 Image 1 Image 1