Another late start, both with CSS and with Florida. You see, there is a railroad here like no other. They time the trains to run at rush hour. Sometimes they run them other times, but the one you can count on is rush hour. Them, and the drawbridges. Blocking traffic exactly where they will cause the most damage.
Oddly, one would think that a newer area like Florida would learn and benefit by the mistakes of others. By new, I mean the majority of the built up area is roughly fifty years old at most. You think they might take a look at the problems of other cities to both find solutions and to avoid the problems in the first place. Not Florida. It is as though they purposely go out and do the worst they possibly can.
Miami is third world, but even a supposedly American town like Hollywood is corrupt to a degree very few taxpayers could ever agree with. It does not take rocket science to conclude why the lady Mayor spent over a million dollars to get elected to a position that only pays $40,000 per year.
The railroads run a mile in from the coast, where they should run a good twenty miles further inshore. This means the desirable residential coastal areas are cut off on one side of the tracks and the factories and employment are on the other. I do no believe in the hundred miles of South Florida I have traveled that I have ever seen a municipal road with a railway underpass or overpass, that is, all are level crossings.
The State heavily pushes the “TriRail” commuter train. However, they carefully priced it to be at least equal to travel by car. The only people that use it are those who can’t afford a car because, like the bus system, it doesn’t go where you want to go when you want to go there. It does, however, block traffic. At least the wait is short. The TriRail has three or four cars maximum.
It is the heavy duty freight trains that cause the problems. Yes, I know it take two to tango but between the opponents, it would be easier to control the trains. They are nearly a mile long and barrel through town at around forty miles per hour. I wonder if anyone has ever calculated to cost of the disruption and lost lives? Trains regularly plow into commuters who try to run the barricades.
Actually, there are two railroads. The really bad one is the Florida East Coast. They love to rattle through blasting the horn. It is equally the fault of local developers who build condos and subdivisions right alongside.
The town councils should have insisted they pay for overpasses right from the start. Instead, a ramp to the nearest roadway is all that is required, so that condo development pushes already inadequate services past the limit. An example is Hallandale Beach, where 3,600 condos have taken the place of 230 houses without any increase in roadway, libraries or parking facilities in an area that was already congested. It takes as long to get from here to the beach on Hallandale Boulevard as it does to take I-95 to Ft. Lauderdale.
Part of the reason for that is more corruption. The traffic lights were synchronized at some point in the past century. Since then, every subdivision that comes along gets a light installed depending on how much the town gets bribed. A classic case is Carriage Hills along Stirling Street, I believe it is the equivalent of 64th Avenue. The light stops the otherwise constant flow of traffic for an incredibly long time although there is rarely anyone ever crossing the road. It would be a simple matter to time the light but then nobody would know where Carriage Hills sits, if you know what I mean.
