Brickell a walkable neighborhood? (Miami, Miami Beach: live, dangerous, to move)

[hurricaneMan1992]

Watch and you be the judge!
Brickell ave. and SW 8th st., this is the heart of Brickell:


Until that intersection has no turn on red and pedestrians are allowed to cross with ALL traffic stopped, or there are pedestrian overpasses, Brickell cannot be considered very walkable. It's easier to cross US1 in Aventura! It's not entirely the drivers' faults either. It's our genius engineers who insist that cars be given short green arrows to turn at the same time pedestrians are given short windows of opportunity to cross!

[WINTERFRONT]

I prefer to use the term "pedestrian friendly"...

South Miami Avenue might not be Brickell but it delivers a far better walking experience.

[WINTERFRONT]

min 0:24

I hate it when those drivers make those moves on pedestrians, it feels like they are rushing us to cross the street. Then u have to make those awkward walks/semi-runs because the car chooses not to wait properly for you ... It pisses me off

[FlyMIA]

I think this has much do with how horrible drivers are in Miami.

However, I do agree Brickell Ave and MANY MANY areas in Miami have this problem. In Downtown (CBD) like for example on flager street there are 15-20 second periods during the day when the streets are fairly busy that all lights are red and all cross walks are green. They should try to implement something like this and also have a no turn on red 8am-6pm thing.
Maybe a sign telling people they must yield to people in the crosswalk no matter what color light they have too.

Miami Beach at some of its busier intersections like 17th and Lincoln and Lincoln and Washington also have the all lights are red for 15-20 seconds at night when their streets are busy.

[Coconut1]

It is walkable; however, this is obviously very dangerous and needs to be fixed. I'm not sure whether the city is in charge of the lights or if it's FDOT.

[boxus]

I go through this almost every day here.

The comment in the video is right, there is no way I would walk in the crossing marks, those cars just swing around the corner without a thought as to their being a person crossing the street.

A person making a right on red is dangerous also, they are paying so much attention to oncoming cars, they never look to see if a person is crossing the street, I always walk behind the car so I can lessen my chances of getting hit.

The pedestrian layout is not much different than when I lived in London, it is just people here do not care about pedestrians, or act like pedestrians are in their way of their all important emergency trip to Publix or something.

[roadtrip75]

Originally Posted by hurricaneMan1992

I watched over a minute of this video but I gave up because I didn't see anything wrong. Was there something bad later in the video?

[ecofancy]

Originally Posted by roadtrip75

I watched over a minute of this video but I gave up because I didn't see anything wrong. Was there something bad later in the video?

[boxus]

Originally Posted by roadtrip75

I watched over a minute of this video but I gave up because I didn't see anything wrong. Was there something bad later in the video?

- Well, you can clearly see right away that when the cross signal is for the pedestrians, a few cars continue to turn left, even delaying traffic to do it, and it is not just one or two, it is a few of them.

This is repeated at 0:36

- At 0:41, there is a comment about the striping, which is true, I never walk on it either, the darn cars swing right across it before stopping when making a right turn.

- At 0:50 you see the car in such an emergency, it cannot wait for the pedestrian traffic to move before it makes its turn, thus swinging right in front, and behind, the pedestrians. This would not be so bad, but being it is Miami, that is a lot of faith to give to drivers to get their timing right not to hit someone, and not much comfort being the pedestrian.

That summarizes the first minute.

Around 0:56, shows that car crawling while the pedestrian went way left, not much to that really, but I have frequently had cars come right up to me within inches, and I will not even get into the idiots that swing around turning right and slamming on the breaks because there are people walking there, or better yet, honking at them to move.

[JimboUSMC17]

Yes, I cross this intersection many times. I work right there. Since I've been here 8 years I've pretty much mastered it but you do have to keep an eye out for idiots.

The problem with changing the configuration of the lights is that traffic is so bad in this area the cars will get backed up and block other intersections such as the one just north on Brickell and 7th. They really need to do something about it.