When Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez and Commissioner Audrey Edmonson made themselves members of the Miami-Dade Expressway Authority early last year — convincing colleagues to appoint them rather than citizens, as they had traditionally done — there was talk about making MDX toll funds available to build rail for the SMART plan.
That was the whole idea, wasn’t it? That’s what Gimenez campaigned on in 2016.
Instead, all he’s done is get his daughter-in-law work and promote the construction of 14 new miles of highway.
That’s not what we were expecting.
Read related: MDX spent $400K on PR, including $60K for mayor’s daughter-in-law
“Miami-Dade mayor takes a seat on MDX toll board and eyes money for rail projects,” read the Feb. 7, 2017 headline in the Miami Herald.
“County preparing to spend $3.6B on rapid transit,” reads another headline, Feb. 16, 2017, in The Next Miami. “Mayor Carlos Gimenez and another county commissioner recently appointed themselves to the MDX board with the intention of taking MDX funds for rail,” the story said.
The mayor himself, at his first MDX meeting, said they agency had to be about more than highways.
“What the commission did in putting myself in and the vice chair is a clear indication that we consider MDX to be part of the solution and that we need to work together because its about mobility, its about getting around” Gimenez told the board at his introduction meeting.
“MDX is about maybe expressways. Maybe it should be more than that,” he said. “How we get around in the very near future is going to be quite different than how we get around today.”
What happened to all the promises?
Read related: Kendall Parkway to nowhere is an intentional slippery slope for UDB
By July of last year, after he was made chairman of the board at MDX, Gimenez was already saying rail wasn’t going to happen. He called it old fashioned. “So 19th century,” he told the Miami Herald’s editorial board. And, instead, he proposes the modern, 21st century solution: More buses.
Now his role on MDX is to promote the Kendall Parkway, a highway to nowhere over endangered wetlands and across the Urban Boundary Development line that everybody in the world knows will just become gridlocked as soon as it opens and that most Miami-Dade residents — and all environmentalists — don’t want.
Gimenez has become the lead advocate for the proposed $1 billion extension of the 836 expressway. Last month, before the county commission voted to approve the highway to nowhere, he actually said that 5,000 postcards received from residents in favor of the Parkway — which is perfectly named because it will become a parking lot — proved support for the project.
What he didn’t say was that there were really 150,000 cards sent out by MDX before the first vote in June — at a cost of $125,000 (which seems inflated) — and that they did not have an option to mark if you were against the new 14 miles of highway. Ladra can’t help but wonder if Gimenez, who was made chairman of the MDX board this past summer, approved that.
Read related: No-brainer Miami-Dade Commission approves Kendall Parkway despite so much
He also forgot to mention that MDX spent at least $400,000 on PR for the Kendall Parkway vote, including $60,000 that went to the company the mayor’s daughter-in-law works for.
On Monday, the Herald’s Doug Hanks wrote that two environmental groups filed separate lawsuits to block the construction of the Kendall Parkway, saying that the public was misled about the details and that what the commission approved was different than what was advertised.
Today, Tuesday, Gimenez will hold court at MDX, 3790 NW 21st St., where the board meets at 4 p.m. On the agenda: an update on the Kendall Parkway and a $2.6 million contract for “Construction Engineering and Inspection (CE&I) Services” on a number of projects, including the addition of a continuous westbound lane and interchange improvements at 57th and 17th avenues, the addition of a continuous eastbound lane from west of the LeJeune exit to 27th Avenue with interchange improvements, and replacing some tolling location points.
Not on the agenda: Rail.
 

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Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez has come up with a genius solution to the county’s massive traffic gridlock and mass transit problems: Cars that fly.
Ladra is not kidding. Gimenez wants to be George Jetson.
We don’t have money to expand rail, which is what was promised to the people with the half-penny tax increase in 2002. Not even for one extension south or north up to Broward. Not even for a light rail across the bay to Miami Beach.
But we apparently can find the money to entertain thoughts of a public private partnership with Lilium, a German engineering startup that raised $90 million to build air taxis just last year and whose five-seat jets could be crossing our skies in as little as two years, according to the mayor’s vision.
Read related: Rumors persist of a new recall effort to oust Carlos Gimenez
You know, like those Amazon drone planes only bigger and carrying people. Don’t worry. They have parachutes! These electric-powered jets are safe because they have parachutes that discharge if there is any “in-flight failure” or collision.
“So you can just float down,” Gimenez told Miami Today. And, apparently, they took him seriously.
Gimenez has met twice already with representatives from Lilium, the last meeting taking place with executives Tuesday afternoon.
“It’s definitely cutting edge, so I’m interested,” the mayor told Miami Today after the first meeting earlier this month, because you know how he loves shiny new stuff. “We have an interesting place to try out the new concept. We want to be the city of the future.”
Is that why you are buying so many buses?
Read related: Termed out Mayor Carlos Gimenez gives self undeserved 70% pay raise
Not that this isn’t something that Ladra is happy to welcome into our world, like jetpacks and hologram TV. It’s kinda awesome. It’s just not a transit solution.
The five-seat jet can go 186 miles in an hour. Except there doesn’t need to be five people for a trip that, for now, would start and end at one of the county’s four airports — MIA, Opa-Locka, Miami Executive (formerly known as Kendall-Tamiami) and Homestead. Eventually, there will be ports built elsewhere. The developer of Paramount WorldCenter Miami designed a skyport atop the 60-story building for future air taxis.
And certainly it won’t come cheap. Think Uber Super X.
How does this do anything to take care of the massive gridlock most of us face daily? Answer: It doesn’t. But Gimenez isn’t concerned with that. This air taxi idea seems like a quicker turnaround and he is all about immediate gratification.
And shiny things.
Read related: Add another son to Mayor Carlos Gimenez’s lobbying clan
And immediate graft? Ladra tried to find out who the lobbyist was for Lilium and couldn’t find anyone in the county lobbyist registrations going back to the beginning of the year. But maybe it’s early. Maybe that’s next as they meet with commissioners.
It’s too bad that Gimenez can’t get excited about finding ways to make a public private partnership for rail happen because that is what the people were promised and that is what the people want.
Nothing, not even flying cars, will be an acceptable alternative.

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The long-debated and controversial 836 extension known as the Kendall Parkway was given final approval 9-4 by the Miami-Dade Commission on Thursday, despite so many warnings, questions and concerns.
That doesn’t mean it’s a done deal, however, and not because it still needs state and federal approval that is hopefully not as purchased as county nods. Lawsuits are threatened and Sen. Marco Rubio, of all people, vows to fight the project because the MDX doesn’t want to buy more land for the Everglades restoration project than it needs to build a 13-mile, six-lane expressway through protected wetlands.
There are so many reasons why this should not happen.
Commissioners were warned that studies show new highways like the Kendall Parkway do not alleviate traffic but only cause more congestion long term. There were unanswered questions about the plan, incomplete information about even the precise route, of which there were at least four. And there are myriad concerns about how this will impact the environment, the Everglades restoration plan and promote future development and sprawl.
It didn’t matter. One could tell it didn’t matter as people pleaded for them to take a step back and wait. Transit advocates even presented options that were less costly and wouldn’t endanger our environment and our water table. In the end, our commissioners voted with the builders and the contractors that pad their campaign accounts and with the Miami-Dade Expressway Authority, which would manage the $650-million to $1 billion project (read: award bids and dole out the funds).
Of course there were some West Kendall residents for it. They are desperate for any relief that they can see on the horizon from a county government that not only forgets about them but also breaks its promises and steals their half-penny tax dollars to fund mediocre bus service and limited MetroRail.
But nobody explained to these people that if that money were invested in the SMART plan transit solutions, in light rail and rapid bus throughout Miami-Dade in the right places then there would be no need for the Kendall Parkway because there would be fewer cars on the road. Nobody explained to them that there are less costly and better alternatives within the UDB that would not promote future development west over what was once protected wetlands.
They think they have no choice. And they do. Or they did.
Because now that the Kendall Parkway is approved, Gimenez and his pocket commissioners, principally Chairman Esteban Bovo, will fall on this “laurel” and do absolutely nothing else for transit. They don’t have to. They did this.
And while most of the commissioners who voted in favor of this were just re-elected — too bad this highway vote didn’t come before the August election — people should remember that.
They did this.

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