North Corridor rapid rail transit still a 12-year wait

Don’t plan to ride North Corridor rapid rail to Hard Rock Stadium until 10 years after World Cup games are played there in 2026.

The long-awaited North Corridor is expected to open in 2036, Nilia Cartaya of the Florida Department of Transportation told the Citizens’ Independent Transportation Trust last week.

The trust oversees county transportation tax receipts, which are to fund the rail line along with the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) and the state. The estimated cost is $1.9 billion, but with the exact mode of travel and the route up in the air and land acquisition not yet begun, costs and funding will be a moving target.

The good news for the trust is that planning, design and engineering for the line has finally begun, Ms. Cartaya said. “It’s underway now as we speak.”

Those steps are to finish in 2026. They were frozen after the county in 2022 pulled the plug on a call for public-private partners and then bought the private bidders’ studies.

That detour to private developers and then back again had left state work dormant from May 2020 to November 2022 “and during that time of course environmental documents go stale, traffic analysis goes stale, and we have to reengage with our partners – and particularly FTA partners – to determine how best to move forward and restart the project,” she said last year.

Focus now is on forecasting travel demand and structural analysis. Next is buying the right-of-way from 2026 to 2030, then an anticipated six years of construction, Ms. Cartaya said last week.

The 9-mile corridor from Northwest 75th to 215th streets along 27th Avenue is to link to Miami Dade College’s North Campus, Calder Casino and Hard Rock Stadium. The corridor in its present form has been in county plans since 2016.

The new rail mode won’t reduce auto traffic lanes along the route, Ms. Cartaya said. “We want to make sure we don’t take away from one mode to” add another.