Believe it or not, transit is a reality in the greater Miami area. The Fort Lauderdale city commission just voted to pay for 25% of the downtown streetcar project known as the Wave. That means they will supply $37.5 million of the estimated $150 million needed for the project. The next step for the Downtown Development Authority is to secure $75 million in federal and $37.5 million in state funding. It seems like a challenge, but the urgent thing is that that was a unanimous vote of support for the project to proceed.

A little more info on the project: The map shown above, from page 2 of this PDF flyer, is not necessarily the most current plan; but it provides a general layout of the proposed route. The streetcar, shown in yellow, will to put through to future FEC corridor transit (purple on the map) and East-West transit on Broward Blvd. (green) at the location of the current Broward Central Bus Terminal. The terminal will turn into a multimodal transit hub for all these systems. plus on the PDF map is existing Tri-Rail in dashed red, the FEC corridor in purple, and the Sunport citizens mover (Airport to Seaport) in orange. The likely deviation from the route on the map is that the streetcar will probably detour down NW 1st Ave. before crossing Broward Blvd. so it can stop at the Central Terminal.

Contrary to what bloggers like Len Degroot or Alesh Houdek might be inclined to believe, Fort Lauderdale is neither dreaming nor out of touch with reality. With gas prices skyrocketing, humans want alternatives to cars. Transit has never looked better.