Miami Beach eyes $100,000 University of Texas study of North Beach gridlock at 63rd Street

Miami Beach is refining a $100,000 agreement with the University of Texas at Austin to study why traffic backs up in North Beach and how to make the 63rd Street crossings at Collins Avenue and Indian Creek Drive safer for people on foot, bikes and scooters, according to a city memo for the Nov. 9 meeting of the commission’s Public Safety and Neighborhood Quality of Life Committee.

The university won a U.S. Department of Transportation research grant that would pay $65,000 of the first phase, leaving the city $35,000, the memo says. That phase would take about a year and look at how queues form and spread, how signal coordination and other disruptions add to congestion, and how traffic changes during peak hours and special events. Besides the two 63rd Street intersections, the study would cover 71st Street at Indian Creek Drive and Dickens Avenue, 71st Street at Abbott Avenue, and Indian Creek Drive at Abbott Avenue. Later phases would propose pilot projects and measure whether they work.

What the state already said no to

Both 63rd Street intersections are on state roads, and neither has bike lanes or an accessible crosswalk on its north side, the memo says. In May 2024 the Florida Department of Transportation turned down the city’s request for a marked crosswalk on the north side of 63rd Street and Indian Creek Drive, saying it would slow traffic through the intersection.

An FDOT analysis that year also rejected adding a westbound through lane that would give drivers coming north on Collins Avenue a direct route onto westbound 63rd Street, instead of looping up to 65th Street and back down Indian Creek Drive. The state found it would lengthen delays and backups on southbound Indian Creek Drive. The memo notes that study looked only at cars, not pedestrians or riders.

Commissioner Tanya K. Bhatt asked for the item in April, and the committee told staff in June to finish the deal with the university.

Money caveat

The memo, dated Oct. 21, warns that the city projects a general fund deficit for fiscal 2028 and that its capital program is underfunded. If the committee wants to pay for a redesign of the intersections, staff recommend taking it up in the fiscal 2028 budget.

Separately, new signal timing for 17 North Beach intersections should be running by the end of 2026, the memo says. Red Sidewalks reported Tuesday that the county had approved timing for only 10 of them as of late August, according to another memo on the same agenda.

The committee meets Monday, Nov. 9, at 9 a.m. at City Hall, 1700 Convention Center Drive.