One thing that struck me while riding the Metromover around downtown Miami was the overabundance of parking. This at least 10-story parking garage sits across the street from Government Center Metrorail and Metromover station, which is one of the largest transit hubs in the city. This is a sad reality.

The location is ideal for a transit oriented development with little or no parking that would encourage more people to use the city’s underused rail system. The availability of so much parking capacity, which I saw repeated along the Metromover’s route, creates ample supply that drives down the cost of parking and further erodes the financial incentive of transit (and let’s not kid ourselves, for some people it is a simple math equation) for those who have the choice to drive.

This is not an isolated incidence of shortsighted transit- or even pedestrian-oriented planning. The 30-minute trip (according to Google trip planner) I took on Metromover, Metrorail and Metrobus ended up being far less pleasant than it could have been because of a lack of sidewalks between the bus stop and my destination in Coral Gables.