Fort Lauderdale considers one-way downtown traffic

A large loop of one-way streets with a dedicated bus lane is under consideration in downtown Fort Lauderdale, the latest mass transit proposal to cater to a burgeoning condo population.

Andrews and Third avenues, the main north-south arteries through the downtown, would serve as the one-way corridors. The extra lanes would allow room for bike riders and buses, and wider sidewalks, officials say.

The proposal is rising from the ashes of the recently nixed Wave streetcar project. It costs less, runs without overhead wires, requires no embedded rails and doesn’t have to share a lane with traffic.

Officials privy to the discussions say buses and other traffic would travel south on Andrews Avenue and north on Third Avenue. The one-way streets would start at North Flagler Drive and end at Southeast 17th Street. Modern-looking buses would pick up passengers regularly, to drop them at other points in the urban center.

“It’s almost like a faux train,” said Broward County Commissioner Tim Ryan, who serves on transportation planning boards.

The idea is in its earliest stages, slowly gaining momentum as officials seek a replacement for the proposed Wave streetcar system. That system

would have run from six blocks north of Broward Boulevard to 17 blocks south of it, mostly along Andrews and Third avenues. The project, more than 16 years in the making, was nixed in April.

Dozens of housing towers, offices, hotels and stores are in permitting, construction or recently built downtown, a development wave that will spill more traffic into the streets.

“We must find a solution to the impending increase in traffic in downtown,” said Greg Stuart, executive director of the transportation planning Metropolitan Planning Organization. Stuart said he met with representatives from the Downtown Development Authority and the city of Fort Lauderdale to discuss the concept. He said Fort Lauderdale Mayor Dean Trantalis asked him to work with the city manager to move the idea forward.

Stuart said it would be critical that the system connect to passengers at the new Brightline train station just north of Broward Boulevard and west of the FEC train tracks. It should have dedicated lanes for bike riders and for buses, he said. Stuart said the price could be as low as $35 million, or more, depending on what the project includes.

The Wave rail system would have cost $226 million for the 2.8 mile-route.

One complaint about a fixed-rail system was its permanence. In the Uber age, Fort Lauderdale residents said they wanted a transit system that’s more accommodating to route changes.

“I am for public transportation,” resident Miranda Lopez told city commissioners before they voted to renege on Wave commitments, “but it has to be more flexible.”

Ryan said he thought young people living in the new downtown apartments and condos would hop aboard a reliable bus system under the right conditions.

“You will get people that will take mass transit, the millennials and the XYZs and all that, if you have frequency and reliability, meaning you’ve got a bus there every 10 or 15 minutes and the buses run on time,” Ryan said.

He said buses can be purchased that look like modern rail, with metal skirts hiding the wheels, and entryways that are level with the sidewalk and don’t require a person to step up.

Stuart said many details of the proposed one-way pair loop haven’t been nailed down, including how traffic would travel along Southeast 17th Street and North Flagler Drive from the one-way streets.

Another problem would be keeping traffic out of the bus-only lanes. The lane could be painted red, a conceptual drawing from the MPO suggests, but “busonly lanes require significant enforcement,” the document says.

The buses probably would be equipped with traffic signal priority software, so stopping at red lights could be kept to a minimum.

“You will get people that will take mass transit, the millennials and the XYZs and all that, if you have frequency and reliability.” Tim Ryan, Broward County commissioner