Bike lane barriers coming to Miami causeway after cyclists die

MIAMI — Vertical barriers are expected to be installed on the most hazardous stretches of bike lanes on the Rickenbacker Causeway after a couple was killed while cycling there over the weekend, according to a plan made public by county administrators on Tuesday.

While details aren’t final, Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava said her administration plans to install the barriers on stretches of the causeway considered dangerous for cyclists as part of a $250,000 upgrade that she ordered this week.

On Sunday, cyclists Yaudys Vera, 48, and Ogniana Reyes, 46, were killed by a collision with an automobile on the county-run causeway connecting Key Biscayne with Miami, reviving demands by bikingsafety advocates for solid dividers between bike lanes and traffic lanes.

“It’s a short-term measure to address certain areas,” Levine Cava said of the barriers the Department of Transportation and Public Works plans to install along Rickenbacker bike lanes. “I don’t know that, in the long term, if that will be the answer.”

In January, Levine Cava won commission approval to cancel a bidding process for a private operator to take over the Rickenbacker tolling operations in exchange for funding about $500 million in upgrades, including separated biking paths. The plan would have required higher tolls, and fizzled in part from opposition by Key Biscayne leaders.

On Tuesday, commissioners called for a more serious look at bike safety.

“The lack of respect we have for cyclists in this county is astounding,” said Oliver Gilbert, vice chairman of the commission.

Levine Cava was a member of the County Commission in 2015 when the board passed a resolution calling for bike-lane barriers on the Rickenbacker after a cycling fatality there, but the structures never came. Some cyclists oppose bike-lane barriers because they can’t pass slower bikers, forcing them to choose between a bike lane and riding in traffic.

“I don’t have a problem with it,” Jose “Pepe” Diaz, chair of the County Commission, said of the barriers. “The problem is a lot of cyclists have a problem with it.”

But advocates for recreational cycling have pressed for vertical barriers on the Rickenbacker, and called the new plan a breakthrough after years of demanding action to prevent collisions on one of the county’s most popular biking routes.

“I’m really optimistic now we’re actually going to see these,” said Mickey Witte, a cyclist and University of Miami neuroscientist who works for the school’s bike safety program.

Witte said she met with Levine Cava and her transportation director, Eulois Cleckley, on Tuesday, and both told her barriers were coming.

“It’s huge, good news,” she said.

Cleckley said engineers from the Department of Transportation and Public Works would evaluate the best places for some type of new safeguards along the Rickenbacker. Those barriers could be purchased under the $250,000 that Levine Cava said she could spend without commission approval.

“Our engineers are going to go out there and look at the key conflict points, and see what we can do to make it safer,” he said. “The highest form of protection is having some form of vertical barrier there.”

The news on barriers followed a meeting by the County Commission, where members of the public urged Miami-Dade to do more than it has after past cycling deaths on the Rickenbacker.

“Thoughts and prayers and tweets are no longer acceptable,” Mark Merwitzer, an associate at the Transit Miami Alliance advocacy group, told commissioners. “We need action.”