Passenger Trains > Miami Transit

After visiting my brother on Key Biscayne, FL in the Miami harbor, I decided to use public transit to the Miami Airport.  Unfortunately on Sunday, the weather did not cooperate and it rained much of the day.

I went out to the bus stop on Crandon Ave. in Key Biscayne.  The bus arrived about 15" late.  It ran non-stop on the Rickenbacher Causeway to the Brickell Station in the south end of downtown Miami.  The bus driver was not collecting fares, as she said the fare box machine was "not working."    Then at Brickell, I purchased my Metro Train ticket for $2.25 from a machine.  I tapped my card at the fare gate; it opened and I rode the escalator up to track level.  In about 10" a Green line train arrived and I boarded the northbound train.  Trains were oparating on 30" headways.  We stopped after several stations for "single-tracking".  We passed a set of track repair machines and proceeded north and then west.

At "Edgemont Heights" (I cannot remember the correct title of the station), I got off the train.  Here I had to transfer to an Orange Line shuttle train to the Miami Airport.  It appeared in about ten minutes and then I rode one stop to the Miami Airport station.  This station is very nice and I quickly went up the escalators and into the airport.  

Summary:  $2.25 for my trip of about 85 minutes from Key Biscayne to the airport.  A real bargain and I would do it again.  A few sleeping homeless on the Metro train, but I did not feel unsafe at any moment.  

Good report.  Miami also has a free people mover, a rubber tire above ground vehicle which stops at Brickell, and heads north to Government Center, across the street from the BrightLine Miami station.  Your Green Line train was on the other side of this when it made its Government Center stop.  You also passed high over the Amtrak Hialeah station a few minutes before arrival at Miami Airport train station.

The combination of two free people mover lines and several free "trolley" lines (actually diesel vehicles fitted to look like 1930s trolley cars) gives a lot of access to tourist Miami.  Little Havana, Wynnwood, Little Haiti, the Design District, etc. The trolleys originate at various people mover and rail stations and run in loops.  They can be tracked in real time.

Lackawanna484 Wrote:
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> Good report.  Miami also has a free people mover,
> a rubber tire above ground vehicle which stops at
> Brickell, and heads north to Government Center,
> across the street from the BrightLine Miami
> station.  Your Green Line train was on the other
> side of this when it made its Government Center
> stop.  You also passed high over the Amtrak
> Hialeah station a few minutes before arrival at
> Miami Airport train station.

The Airport Metro Line (which is not the Green Line, but the Orange Line) goes nowhere near the Amtrak Hialeah/Miami station.

The Green Line does not pass over Amtrak station. It passes over the TriRail connection station a bit south west of the Amtrak station.

The Miami Amtrak station is pretty underserved by buses and the closest Metrorail Station is a little bit of a ways, walkingwise from the Amtrak station. I probably wouldn’t trust the neighborhood around the Amtrak Station to even walk to the nearest cornerstore. In the short term, Amtrak is supposed to serve the Miami Intermodel Center.

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Nice report. Transit works and works well in some cities and some places. Sounds like the connections, especially for a Sunday are planned out. 

Not charging fares if the farebox isn't working has become fairly common practice. We used to have to hand collect when I first started but I like most people didn't like having upwards of a hundred bucks in my shirt pocket. I always kept it in my shirt pocket, if someone wanted it, it was there's...

Jim