If you enjoy riding your bike around North Beach then you’ll appreciate the recent program to install bicycle parking racks in North Beach Commercial Districts. Over the summer, the City of Miami Beach Transportation Department identified 50 locations in North Beach where bicycle racks will be installed.  “You can already see the increase in people riding their bikes. I’m happy to see that the city is keeping up with the times and helping residents find alternatives way to get around town”, says Daniel Veitia, a business owner that recently had a bicycle rack installed near his business. Mr. Veitia, who lives just a few blocks from his office, often rides his bike to work and urges other residents to do the same. “North Beach is such an amazing community for me because I have the pleasure of living, working and playing all within a short bike ride away.”

North Beach has long suffered from a lack of progressive and alternative ways to get around town.  But that is now old news. With the completion of the long await beachwalk and the planned implementation for a comprehensive grid of bicycle lanes throughout the area, residents may soon favor the use of bicycles as an alternative for getting around North Beach. There are several efforts on their way today that include the City of Miami Beach Atlantic Greenway Network along with the Florida Department of Transportation’s (FDOT) efforts that include 7 individual projects that are on the drawing board for the North Beach Community (The North Beach area has long been affected by the aterial State Roads that run through our community and lack sufficient bicycle and pedestrian improvements). City planners and community activist and working against the clock to insure that those FDOT plans for roads like – Normandy Drive, 71st Street, Collins Ave and Abbott – include the bicycle lanes and pedestrian safety improvements that seem to be part of any modern roadway improvement project across the nation.

What if you dont like to ride your bike? Then you may soon have the option of a local North Beach circulator to take you to your favorite destinations. That’s right, Miami Dade Transit is working with the City of Miami Beach to identify a viable route for a North Beach Circulator.  Even with the $444 Million dollar budget shortfall for 2010, MDT still seems optimistic that a North Beach Circulator will soon be a reality. Plans for the circulator are dependent on MDT’s ability to consolidate some of the repetitive routes that are handled by what seems as a army of buses that travel up and down our neighborhood streets, Collins and Harding Avenues.  The plan for the local circulator starts to look even brighter when you consider the Transportation Intermodal Center that has also been identified by the City and MDT and the long term solution to improve the effectiveness of an inefficient and underutilized transit system.

Residents deserve an alternative to their cars, it’s great to know that changes are comming and residents will soon have a safe and alternative choice when they decide to go out around town.